Otobong Nkanga. “In Pursuit of Bling: The Transformation”, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc, Paris and Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam. © Photo: Raphael Fanelli.
‘Otobong Nkanga: From Where I Stand’ – Tate St Yves Tate St Yves presents ‘Otobong Nkanga: From Where I Stand’, the first UK museum survey of Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga. 21 September 2019 – 5 January 2020.]]>
Source: Tate St Yves
Otobong Nkanga (born in 1974 Kano, Nigeria) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Her multi-disciplinary practice spans tapestry, drawing, photography, installation, video and performance, and addresses the politics of land and its relationship to the body, as well as the complex and fraught histories of land acquisition and ownership. Nkanga connects threads that reveal the entanglements of bodies, land and natural resources.
Nkanga created several new works for the Tate St Ives exhibition, including a site-specific wall painting, a sculptural installation and a performance. The show also brings together recent works such as the woven textile with photographs “The Weight of Scars”, 2015, the installation “Tsumeb Fragments”, 2015, and the chromojet printed carpet “From Where I Stand, 2015, alongside paintings and photographs produced from the mid-2000s onwards, several of which are shown publicly for the first time.
Nkanga’s works reflect on the processes and consequences of the extraction of natural resources from ethical, human and material perspectives. She explores the transformation of minerals into desirable commodities – including the use of mica in make-up to give glimmer and shine – as a commentary on the value placed on material culture, often at the expense of the environment.
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