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Otobong Nkanga has emerged winner of the 2015 Yanghyun Foundation Artist Award in Seoul, Korea. Ms Nkanga is the first African recipient of the prestigious award.
Nkanga was born in Kano, Nigeria in 1974. She studied at OAU, Nigeria, State, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, and completed Advanced Studies in the Performing Arts at the DasArts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
She has participated in a number of international exhibitions, including Biennale de Lyon (2015), Sao Paulo Biennale (2014), Berlin Biennale (2014) and Sharjah Biennale (2013), and has held solo exhibitions at a number of art institutions, such as Museum Folkwang, Germany; M HKA, Belgium; Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; and Kadist Foundation, France.
"Otobong Nkanga’s activities and performances encompass all kinds of media and motivate photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and video. They weave together concerns about land, natural resources, architecture, the value connected to them and the dynamic status of remembrance. Her trans-categorical artistic practice is defined by her ability to pervade the complex layers of human and natural traces left in material objects and landscapes. Architecture and landscape act as a sounding board for narration and “the performative,” as a human trace that testifies of ways of living and environmental issues."