Event
MATRIX 260 / Otobong Nkanga: From Where I StandPost an Event »
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
May 11 - May 11, 2016Info
- http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
- (510) 642-0808
MATRIX 260 consists of two mixed-media performance works that use self-reflection and storytelling to explore the material, natural, and sociopolitical history of Nigeria and beyond. The artist will present From Where I Stand (2015) at BAMPFA on May 11 and Contained Measures of a Kolanut (2012) at the Tropical House in the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley on May 14. At the root of From Where I Stand is an investigation into the colonial history of the mineral rush of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when European companies extracted resources, such as mica, copper, and malachite, from resource-rich areas, leaving them in a state of ruin; this is a subject Nkanga has engaged with for many years. In May 2015, Nkanga set out on a quest to Tsumeb, Namibia, a German colonial town founded in 1905, to find out what remained after the extensive mining of a massive natural hill of green, oxidized copper ore (malachite and azurite). In response to her findings, Nkanga has developed several works such as From Where I Stand, in which a rug fashioned after the structural shape of a mineral acts as a platform from which she develops a series of performances. For MATRIX, Nkanga will debut a newly commissioned performance as part of this work.
