Otobong Nkanga Lecture
Otobong Nkanga, Loaded tears turned to rock, 2023, hand-tufted carpet, Murano glass, wood, ceramic, clay, handmade rope, metal connectors, dimensions variable
Join us for a lecture by artist Otobong Nkanga followed by an audience Q & A.
Doors open at 5:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Explore the Visiting Artists Program homepage for visitor information, recordings of past events, and more.
Otobong Nkanga’s multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political, ecological, and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals, and the earth. Unsettling the divisions between minimal and conceptual or sensual and surreal approaches, the artist’s research-based practice constellates humans and landscapes, organic and non-organic matter. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, textiles, and sculpture, Nkanga creates pathways translating the natural world—its plants, herbs, minerals, and living organisms—into networked, aggregated situations evoking memory, labor, home, care, ownership, emotion, touch, and smell. Reframing people and objects as compressed multitudes and as entities that come into being in relation to other entities, Nkanga deftly weaves insights from geology, botany, poetry, and non-Western knowledge systems. Her works’ allusions to the reparative potentials of connectivity urgently gesture toward the possibility of more livable futures.
Born in Kano, Nigeria, Nkanga lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Last fall (2024) she presented a new, site-specific commission at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Valencia, Spain (2023); Frist Art Museum, Nashville (2023); Museum Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, Belgium (2022); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria (2021); Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy (2021); Villa Arson, Nice, France (2021); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2020); Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2020); Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, United Kingdom (2020); Tate St Ives, St Ives, United Kingdom (2019); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2019); Ar/Ge kunst Galleria Museo, Bolzano, Italy (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018); Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (2017); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom (2016); Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Libanon (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2015); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, The Netherlands (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium (2015); and KADIST, Paris (2015). Her work has been prominently featured in international biennials, including the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); documenta 14 (2017); and the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015).
Nkanga is the 2025 Nasher Prize Laureate and was the recipient of the Golden Afro Artistic Award in the Visual Arts (2024) and the inaugural Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme (2019); the Special Mention Award at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2019); the Belgium Art Prize (2017); and the Yanghyun Prize (2015). Other notable awards include the Peter-Weiss-Preis, Sharjah Biennial Prize, and the Flemish Cultural Award for Visual Arts Ultima Prize.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access.