Kosisochukwu Nnebe and Ibrahim Maham in Conversation

Kosisochukwu Nnebe and Ibrahim Maham in Conversation
Saturday, July 27, 2024, 1PM–2PM
Location: Online

Moderator: Joséphine Denis

Free admission. Please register here.

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We're thrilled to invite you to a virtual conversation with Kosisochukwu Nnebe and Ibrahim Mahama, taking place in the context of The Seeds We Carry, Nnebe’s solo exhibition at SAW, curated by Joséphine Denis. This event is co-presented by SAW, Black Artists’ Networks in Dialogue (BAND, Toronto), G.A.S. Foundation (Lagos) and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Lagos), and promises an in-depth exploration of the site-specific and process-oriented art practices of two contemporary African artists and their impact on communities.

Join us for an enriching discussion in which Nnebe and Mahama will explore their respective art practices and the social dynamics and impacts that drive them. The conversation will delve into their focus on materiality—jute for Mahama and food for Nnebe—in uncovering colonial histories, as well as their innovative use of space to create community-centric art experiences. Moderated by Joséphine Denis, this event will offer deep insights into artistic expressions as spaces of transformation.


The conversation will be in English.

Biographies


Kosisochukwu Nnebe

Born in Nigeria and raised in Canada, Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a conceptual artist, researcher and writer, with an educational and professional background in economics and social and environmental policy. Working across installation, lens-based media and sculpture, she engages with topics ranging from the politics of Black visibility, embodiment and spatiality to the use of foodways and language as counter-archives of colonial histories. At its core, her practice is interested in anti-imperial world-building through acts of solidarity (human and otherwise), the troubling of colonial logics, and speculative (re)imaginings of otherwise pasts, presents and futures.

Nnebe’s work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. She has forthcoming solo exhibitions at the Bowling Green State University Gallery in Ohio and Fonderie Darling in Montreal. She has participated in residencies in Miami with El Espacio 23 and WOPHA, Maroon Town, Jamaica, with NLS Kingston, and is the recipient of the 2023 G.A.S. Fellowship started by Yinka Shonibare in Nigeria. In 2025, Nnebe will join a small cohort of artists, designers and researchers for a year-long residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. Her writings on her artistic research will appear in two forthcoming book publications.


Ibrahim Mahama

Born and now residing in Tamale, Ghana, Ibrahim Mahama is an interdisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture and textiles. He is best known for his vast and ambitious interventions in public spaces, using jute sacks to address systems of value, global commerce and the detritus of colonialism. Mahama’s most recent commission involved wrapping London’s Barbican Centre in 2,000 square metres of handwoven cloth. In 2024, Mahama received the inaugural Sam Gilliam Award from the Dia Art Foundation for the complexity, scale and responsiveness of his work.

Mahama has presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany (2023), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2022), Frac des Pays de la Loire (2022), the High Line, New York (2021) and the University of Michigan Museum of Art (2020). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2021), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020), and in the Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023), the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), Documenta 14 (2017) and the 56th and 58th Venice Biennales (2015 and 2019).

Mahama is the founder of Red Clay Studio, the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Arts and Nkrumah Volini, which he created to offer spaces for interrogation and artistic (ex)change in northern Ghana.


Joséphine Denis

Joséphine Denis, born in Haiti and raised in Port-au-Prince and New York, is a curator and writer. Her work advocates for Black diasporic art and encourages deeper engagement to foster a nuanced understanding of the specific contexts surrounding contemporary practices. Rooted in community dialogue, her work is guided by her kin. Recent exhibitions include Kosisochukwu Nnebe: The Seeds We Carry at SAW, Ottawa, Jah Grey: Putting Ourselves Together, BAND x Contact Photography Festival, Tkaronto, and Amartey Golding: The Comfort of Embers, The Power Plant Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tkaronto.

Denis's writing appears in The Power Plant Publications, RELATIONS: Diaspora and Painting (Phi, Hirmer, 2020) and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Ada x, among others. She has worked at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Tkaronto; the SBC Gallery of contemporary art, Tiohtià:ke; Serpentine Galleries, London; and Faurschou, Beijing.