Exhibition guide
Otobong Nkanga. I dreamt of you in colours

A major figure on the contemporary art scene, Otobong Nkanga, born in Kano, Nigeria, in 1974, and based today in Antwerp, Belgium, has been developing a body of work that draws inspiration from her history and research, focusing on the connections between ecology, memory and the circulation of resources.

Following her studies in Nigeria, France, and the Netherlands, the artist explored issues relating to mining and the use of the earth’s resources, examining our complex social, political and material connections to space and the earth through a multidisciplinary practice including drawings, paintings, installations, tapestries, photographs, videos, sculptures, ceramics, performances, sound and poetry.

Drawing on her personal history and research, which reflects transhistorical and diverse influences, she creates networks and constellations between humans and landscapes while addressing the restorative capacity of natural and relational systems.

The notion of strata is central to the artist’s practice, both in the materiality of her works and in her way of thinking about the relationships between bodies and lands, made of mutual exchange and transformation. Nkanga simultaneously explores the circulation of materials and goods, of people and their intertwined histories, as well as their exploitation, marked by the residues of violent colonial histories. While questioning memory, she offers the vision of a possible future.

At once a survey and a cross-section of the artist’s protean oeuvre, the exhibition traces the genealogy of recurrent subjects whose visual expression is constantly evolving. It brings together emblematic installations, monumental tapestries, and a significant number of drawings, some of which go back to the earliest years of her career and are being shown for the first time. On this occasion, the artist reactivates certain works through performances in a poetics of entanglement, creating connections between forms, materials, and ideas.

Exhibition page

The exhibition opens with works on paper created while Nkanga was still a student at the Fine Arts Department at Obafemi-Awolowo University in Ilé-If, Nigeria. In her first year at the University, Nkanga studied mainly painting and in particular the colour palette whose chromatic range runs throughout her work, and which would later unfold in the shimmering hues of her monumental tapestries.

It was in Paris, where she was studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, that Nkanga created what she considers to be her first-complex and multi-layered work of art, Fattening Room (1999). In this piece she brought together for the first time her ideas on architecture, sculpture, and costume design in a performance that gave rise to a photomontage. This work thus encapsulates the central themes that the artist would continue to explore, namely the body in its connection to the earth, architecture and textiles, at the crossroads of multiple influences.

The artist’s relationship to home and child-hood memories can be seen in the drawing series Filtered Memories (1999), in which she revisits significant events from her early years. As she puts it, emphasising the importance of drawing in her practice, ‘From childhood, apart from play-ing with the soil, I was also drawing and sketching things… Drawing is that space of release where thoughts, imaginaries, conflict, anger, all kinds of emotions and feelings are put together and bundled and thrown out onto the paper. But it’s also a way for throwing out sketches and plans, because only by drawing can I get close to what I wish to convey.’

The installations Awaiting Pleasures But It Cut (2002–2003) and Awaiting Pleasures – The Workstation (2003) reflect her connection with architecture and her taste for experimentation. The needle, an element found at the heart of both installations, bears a dual meaning, between care and threat, tackling the question of the body and its vulnerability. These wooden structures, like the ceramic pieces in Pleasure Fragments (2002), were created mainly for performances.

With the Alterscape (2006) series of photographs, the artist pictures herself behind a model where natural landscapes and human constructions blend. She seems to physically merge with the environment, inviting us to think about our human impact on the Earth, but also about our potential for connection with the landscapes and biodiversity that surround us.

L’installation In Pursuit of Bling (2014) présentée dans cette salle restitue une recherche menée par Nkanga sur une ancienne mine de cuivre à Tsumeb, en Namibie, et rend compte des métamorphoses des ressources naturelles lors de leur transformation de matières premières en produit fini. Tsumeb fait partie d’un système extractiviste dans lequel une localité riche en ressources est saisie et expropriée pour être intégrée dans un réseau mondial de capitaux et d’infrastructures. Entre le début de son exploitation en 1875 et la fermeture de la mine en 1996, des millions de tonnes de cuivre, zinc, plomb, cadmium, argent et germanium ont ainsi été expédiées vers l’Allemagne, la Belgique et l’Amérique du Nord, laissant une terre épuisée et vidée de ses ressources.

Initialement créé pour la 8e Biennale de Berlin après un long processus de recherche, In Pursuit of Bling est composée de minéraux (mica, malachite, cuivre), d’images photographiques imprimées sur du calcaire, de poudre de maquillage, et de vidéos présentées dans un dispositif de 28 tables placées autour de deux tapisseries qui re-produisent la structure d’un atome minéral. Le tout constitue une cartographie des lieux d’extraction de minéraux brillants (bling), de leur circulation et de leur transformation, et souligne les liens entre entreprise coloniale, pouvoir et ressources naturelles.

Dans la vidéo Remains of the Green Hill (2015), réalisée à Tsumeb, Nkanga s’adresse à la terre blessée en chantant, prenant acte de toutes les ressources pillées à cet endroit, et du coût en vies humaines et non humaines. Elle parle de sa performance comme d’un acte d’apaisement, semblable à une offrande à la terre.

En face de l’installation, la tapisserie The Weight of Scars (2015) explore elle aussi les paysages meurtris, la question de la reconstruction et le poids des héritages coloniaux et extractivistes. Les photographies circulaires aimantées sur la tapisserie documentent les vestiges de divers sites miniers abandonnés de Namibie: sol fissuré, béton négligé, pipelines et espaces vides clôturés. S’appuyant sur l’effet que les images ont sur notre perception du monde, l’artiste établit un état des lieux des activités industrielles et de leurs conséquences aussi bien géologiques qu’humaines.