The Nigerian-born, Antwerp-based artist Otobong Nkanga has joined Lisson Gallery in a move that she says is to focus on her creative growth. She is also no longer represented by Mendes Wood DM. Nkanga has a solo exhibition at Lisson opening next year and will also show work at an upcoming group show at the London gallery in May.
“I don't know if it's a question of change, or if it's a question of growing with another team and with a gallery that I've always had a great admiration for,” Nkanga tells The Art Newspaper. “When I first met Nicholas Logsdail [Lisson's founder] and Ossian Ward [the gallery's content director] in Venice, the conversation was just so smooth. It felt like we've known each other for a long time.”
Nkanga is ranked 81st in ArtReview's Power 100 list for 2022, which cites her inclusion in the group exhibition When Faith Moves Mountains, the first show to have taken place at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kyiv after the Russian invasion, and her subsequent solo show, Of Cords Curling around Mountains at Castello di Rivoli in Turin.
Her multi-disciplinary practice includes performance, sculpture, film, textiles, painting, drawing and installation, and is based on ideas of colonial extractivism and how that manifests in the relationships between people, place, natural materials, society and the body.
Silent Force, Red Caress (2022), part of Otobong Nkanga's show at St John's Hospital in Bruges, Belgium in 2022 Dominique Provost
“As a team we have long admired Otobong and her multifaceted practice, and are excited to announce that we will be starting on this journey together,” says Lisson partner Louise Hayward. "Otobong’s important practice as an artist and thinker spans many media, genres and themes, allowing her to connect audiences to these vital works and ideas. She has broken so much ground already that we are honoured to continue in this vein and committed to helping her grow further.”
Speaking of her reasons for moving on, Nkanga cites the Lisson team’s understanding of her work and process. “Getting to know the gallery, I understood how committed the team are, and I know they will take care of the work and that will also grow with me and listen to me," she says. "I think that aspect of listening—not only listening to the artist, but to what the work does and where it's going—is so important. I think Lisson is the gallery I need for my work.”
Nkanga's Solid Manoeuvres performance at Berlin's Gropius Bau in 2020 Courtesy Lisson Gallery
The group show Matter As Actor (3 May-24 June), organised by the Lisson partner and curatorial director Greg Hilty, will include tapestries and photographic works by Nkanga alongside her long-term performance and sculptural work Solid Manoeuvres (2015). The show, which addresses artists' relationships with the materials they engage with, will present Nkanga's work alongside those by Richard Long, Yelena Popova, Lucy Raven, Zhan Wang and Feifei Zhou.
This will precede the multi-artist show Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis at London's Hayward Gallery (21 June-3 September) and a retrospective of the artist's work at IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Spain (13 July-5 November).
While she has parted ways with Mendes Wood, which has locations in Brussels, São Paulo and New York, Nkanga is still represented by the Amsterdam gallery Lumen Travo and Galerie In Situ–Fabienne Leclerc in Paris.