2005-2015
In performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles, photography, and installation works, Nigeria-born artist Otobong Nkanga creates narratives that dwell on memory, environment, and the postcolonial histories embedded in her home country. In her works-on-paper especially, Nkanga creates landscapes and corporeal forms with clean, hard-edged lines that address the political and ecological impacts of Nigeria’s oil industry. These works also reference West African cultural artifacts, which Nkanga situates in a political web of Nigeria’s postcolonial economy, raising questions about the cultural, ethnographic, and use value of these items.