Nnenna Okore

Overview
Nnenna Okore, Serendipities, 2024
Nnenna Okore, Serendipities, 2024
Nnenna Okore (b. 1975, Australia) creates abstract, richly textured wall sculptures with themes related to waste, carbon emission, and energy consumption. Using plant-based materials (specifically food scraps and waste), Okore creates bioplastic which is then utilized in large sculptural forms and art installations. The artist strives to aestheticize the issue of climate change, while contributing to its solution –by making materials that procure less waste and pose little risk to the environment. Okore’s structures mimic the intricacies of nature familiar from her childhood in Nigeria. Her manually repetitive techniques of fraying, weaving, dyeing, and sewing recall her childhood experiences where she watched and participated in daily manual activities like cooking, washing, harvesting, and fabricating brooms.
 
Okore received her Master’s degree in sculpture from University of Iowa and her Ph.D. in Fine Art from Monash University. Okore, a 2012 Fulbright Award recipient and Creative Victoria Creators Fund grantee, has exhibited her work in major venues such as the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Museum Afro Brasil, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Bruges Triennial, Chengdu International Biennial, Moody Center of Art, Bradbury Art Museum, and recently at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. Her work is included in the collections of the Illinois EPA Capital Development Board, Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, and Kruizenga Art Museum. Okore's 2018 exhibition at Jenkins Johnson Gallery was highlighted in Sculpture Magazine, and her essay "Creating a Climate of Change: Bioplastic Call-and-Response" is featured in the publication "The Work of Art in the Age of Planetary Destruction" by Eds. Aarathi Prasad and David Osrin. Current exhibitions include Holding Space at the Beltway in Toronto Canada, Spirit Dance, at The Stanley Museum of Art, Chasing Butterflies in Harmattan, at Sakhile & Me Gallery in Frankfurt Germany, and Right is Right at Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco. Okore lives and works in both Nigeria and Chicago, Illinois.
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