Nnenna Okore is a Nigerian artist and Assistant Professor of Art at North Park University. She has received several awards and residencies worldwide, and has been exhibited in several prestigious galleries and museums including the Museum of Art and Design in New York and the October Gallery in London.

Nnenna Okore is a Nigerian artist and Assistant Professor of Art atNorth Park University. She has received several awards and residencies worldwide, and has been exhibited in several prestigious galleries and museums including the Museum of Art and Design in New York and the October Gallery in London.

Early Life and Education
Nnenna Okore was born in 1975. She studied Art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting, under the tutelage of one of Africa’s most celebrated artists, Professor El Anatsui, in 1999. She then went abroad and earned MA and MFA degrees in Sculpture from the University of Iowa in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

Career
Okore uses what she refers to as ‘urban recyclia’ – discarded yet reusable materials such as magazines, newspapers, and everyday waste – found in her environment to create a unique style of art. Her work focuses on themes such as consumerism, excessive wastefulness, and the transformation of materials.

One of her most celebrated works, a piece entitled Rope (2006), was made from rolls of newspaper wound and glued together. She uses waves and modulating techniques as seen in some of her works such as Vogue, Nwaada Lined Clothand Pride. Other materials employed in her work include clay, rope, wax, wood, burlap and yarn. Okore uses manually repetitive techniques such as fraying, tearing, teasing, weaving, dyeing, waxing, and sewing – all methods common seen in artworks made in the rural communities in West Africa – in the production of her work. Through her work, Okore aims to enrich the experiences and sensitivities of viewers, to stimulate interest and create thought-provoking conversations about the significance of fabric in the cultural and natural world.

A recent solo exhibition in Lagos sponsored by Sterling Bank and the Wheatbaker Hotel titled Flow began in February 2013. The art on show differed from her older works as many of the pieces were hardened to resemble sculpture.

Okoye received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2012 to lecture at the University of Lagos. She has been profiled by the Chicago Tribune, BBC and New York Times.

                       

                         

                Ashoebi II, 2008

                         

                                  When the Heavens Meet the Earth, 2011

Watch Okore speak about inspiring young female artists in a July 2011 interview: