Zina Saro-Wiwa makes video installations, documentaries, music videos and experimental films.
20 Facts About Zina Saro-Wiwa
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Zina Saro-Wiwa's practice includes New West African Kitchen, a project where Saro-Wiwa re-imagines West African cuisine, each feast featuring African video art presentations and a mini-lecture.
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On 22 March 2011, Zina Saro-Wiwa was named as one of the top 25 leaders of the African Renaissance in The Times newspaper.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, to Ken and Maria Saro-Wiwa.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa was executed in 1995 by the military regime in Nigeria when she was 19.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa grew up in Surrey and Sussex in the UK where Saro-Wiwa's wife Maria and five children lived.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa attended the private girls' school, Roedean, in Sussex, and the University of Bristol where she studied economic and social history.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa worked freelance all over the network on BBC Radio 4, Radio 3, World Service Radio and BBC2.
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From 2004 to 2008, Zina Saro-Wiwa was one of the presenters for BBC Two's flagship arts magazine programme The Culture Show.
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In 2008, Zina Saro-Wiwa interviewed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe at his home.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa began her career as a filmmaker with 2002's Bossa: The New Wave, a documentary short about contemporary Bossa Nova music, which she directed and produced.
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In 2010, Zina Saro-Wiwa went to Lagos, Nigeria, to make two films in response to her fascination with the Nollywood film industry.
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The central Nollywood-inspired device in this short experimental film is the practice and significance of wig-wearing in Nollywood film, a practice Zina Saro-Wiwa invested with deeper psychological as well as science-fiction layers.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa began making video art in 2010 when she co-curated the exhibition Sharon Stone in Abuja, which showed at Location One Gallery on Greene Street in SoHo, New York.
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Mourning Class: Nollywood is the first in an ongoing video installation series in which Zina Saro-Wiwa explores the practice and performance of mourning and grieving.
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In 2011, Zina Saro-Wiwa went on to make Sarogua Mourning, a video installation that confronted her own inability to mourn her father's public death.
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In 2012, Zina Saro-Wiwa was commissioned by The Menil Collection to make a piece of work addressing the issue of love in Africa for the exhibition The Progress of Love.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa created the project Eaten by the Heart, a video installation and documentary project exploring love performances and heartbreak among Africans and African Diasporans.
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In 2012, Zina Saro-Wiwa shot and edited her first music video.
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In 2008, Zina Saro-Wiwa was commissioned to write an essay about the Nollywood industry, titled "No Turning Back", for South African photographer Pieter Hugo's monograph Nollywood.