When Nkanga first entered the seventeenth-century Scuola di San Pasquale in Venice, ahead of a two-person exhibition coinciding with the Biennale, she started singing. It was, the exhibition organiser told Ocula, a way of hearing the building before seeing it. Such is the concern of the artist’s practice (involving drawing, textiles, installation, video and performance) with questions of home, place, displacement and the emotional resonance they have to our being. She proves an obvious choice then for the many group exhibitions that take such themes, not least this year’s Busan Biennale, which has the South Korean city in its lens, and When Faith Moves Mountains, the first show staged since the Russian invasion at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kyiv. Her solo at Castello di Rivoli, Turin, which closed in July, was followed by an exhibition at the Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges, which used objects from Musea Brugge and the memories inspired by the old hospital as its starting point.
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Otobong Nkanga
Artist - Interested in questions of home, place and displacement
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