Nnenna Okore


Nnenna Okore is an artist who works both in Nigeria and the United States. Her largely abstract sculptures are inspired by textures, colors and forms within her immediate milieu. Okore's work frequently uses flotsam or discarded objects to create intricate sculpture and installations through repetitive and labor-intensive techniques. She learned some of her methods, including weaving, sewing, rolling, twisting and dyeing, by watching local Nigerians perform daily tasks. Most of Okore's work explores detailed surfaces and biomorphic formations. Okore's work has been shown in galleries and museums in and outside of the United States, and she has won several international awards, including a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2012.
Okore is currently a professor of art at North Park University in Chicago, where she teaches sculpture.

Background

Okore was born in Australia to parents from Ututu, Abia State in Nigeria. After moving from Australia to Nigeria at the age of four, Okore spent most of her childhood in the university town of Nsukka in southeastern Nigeria, where both parents worked as academics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Okore's art was subsequently influenced by visual characteristics of Nsukka, such as dilapidated mud adobe houses with zinc roofing, piles of firewood accumulated against a broken structure, people in ragged clothing, and rugged terrain.
Living in the senior staff quarters located close to the campus borders, Okore was in constant contact with the off-campus community, being exposed to the local marketplaces and other daily interactions with the rural population. Today, her work employs a range of environmental materials like clay, rope, fabric, sticks, and paper, which she frequently came across while in Nsukka.

Education

Okore attended the University of Nigeria Primary School, the University of Nigeria Secondary School, and Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland for high school. She was enthusiastic about art during primary school, especially knitting, sewing, and crocheting. During this time, Okore won multiple art awards, including the first prize in the African Child Art Competition, organized by UNESCO in 1993. In secondary school, she drew and painted frequent still-life drawings and water color paintings. Her family, especially her father, A. O. Okore, were supportive of her efforts to become an artist.
By the time she graduated from high school in Swaziland, Okore was proficient in printmaking, pottery, modeling, and acrylic painting. A few years later, she won the UNIFEM Women's Empowerment Art Competition, whose prize included trips to Dakar, Senegal; Abuja, Nigeria; and Beijing, China, to represent African youth in the Women's World Conferences.
In 1995, Okore enrolled into the Fine and Applied Arts undergraduate program at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her first mediums were oil and acrylic paint. By her third year, Okore began experimenting with unusual materials on canvas, in an effort to distinguish her work from the more conventional painting of her peers. She employed leaves, jute, cloth, sticks, shredded photographs, broomsticks, recycled paper, and leather, among other materials. Subsequently, she started creating free-flowing surfaces that were characterized by their textural build-up of paint, soil, rope, fabric, and other found objects. By her final year, her works were largely focused on issues of consumption and inventive recycling as it related to the Nigerian experience. Okore was influenced by her teachers, including Chijioke Onuora, Chike Aniakor, and El Anatsui. Okore received a bachelor's degree in fine and applied arts from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1999, with first-class honors.
Two years later, Okore relocated to the United States for a masters of fine arts program at the University of Iowa, which she completed in 2005.

Career

After graduating from the University of Iowa, Okore was recruited by North Park University to teach and oversee the sculpture unit of the art department in 2005. She is presently a professor of art and department head, instructing undergraduate students in three-dimensional design, sculptural practices, and drawing, among other subjects.
Alongside her teaching career, Okore's work has been exhibited to global audiences in over 80 solo and group shows, across international venues in Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa. Her works have been reviewed positively in publications such as Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Financial Times, Art South Africa and Ceramics: Art and Perception.
In 2012, Okore received a Fulbright Scholar Award. With the accompanying grant, she traveled to Nigeria for a year-long teaching project at the University of Lagos, while producing a series of new creative explorations. She returned to the United States after completing her project in 2013.

Materials

Okore's early years in the United States presented her with environmental and cultural differences. While adopting new materials inspired by her surroundings, she incorporated similar objects as those she used in Nigeria, like sticks, leaves or jute materials.
Okore tends to feature the organic, fibrous, malleable, and ethereal qualities of materials. In her present works, the materials capture the visual characteristics of transient, root-like or dense forms. Paper, in particular offers a range of possibilities to Okore's process. She also incorporates the symbolic narrative nature of newspapers. Burlap is also featured in Okore's work, in which it is used for its transient and delicate features.

Work and concept

Themes of aging, death and decay are recurrent in Okore's work. She captures the diverse and tactile aspects of the physical world through weathered, dilapidated and lifeless forms. Through manually repetitive processes, Okore's works reveal the complex and distinct properties of fabric, trees, barks, topography, and architecture. Her works are also inspired by traditional women's craft in Africa.

Gallery representation