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Spaces of Memory The Nigerian-born artist, who studied in Paris and Amsterdam, and who now lives in Antwerp, reflects on the scars left by colonial extractivism on the land of her birth and on the ways that memory can be triggered through our bodily senses to connect us to the past and the present. Otobong Nkanga interviewed by Ellen Mara De Wachter Double Plot, 2018, installation view, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo Ellen Mara De Wachter: Whenever I encounter your work I am struck by your use of scenography and how you implicate the viewer in the space of the work. One of the first pieces I saw of yours, In Pursuit of Bling at the 2014 Berlin Biennale, included tapestries, sculptures, video, text and a live performance. It invited audiences to walk around the installation and discover the full panoply of elements, techniques and materials that you had used. Last year, your 2018 work Double Plot was installed in the Hayward Gallery’s ‘Dear Earth’ exhibition, complete with a full-sized fallen tree, tapestries, water, video and prints. In ‘We Come from Fire and Return to Fire’, your show at Lisson Gallery, several works involve botanical extracts that give off scents into the exhibition space. What do you aim to achieve with works that invite this kind of complex engagement from the viewer? Otobong Nkanga: The idea is related to how we engage with other life forms and materials. I’m always thinking of performance and scenography, how the artwork changes depending on the light, wind or smell – from how the light shines on things, to how the sun moves from one end of the space to the other. All those elements are integrated and part of making the work. Even though you are not permitted to touch objects in an exhibition, the relationship to the body is crucial. I like to think of my work entering the visitor through the pores of their skin. If the body cannot touch a specific thing, I start thinking about how I can allow the body to be alive in such a way that something else is triggered. Smell is one of those things that opens up spaces of memory, of past encounters. When connecting with the physical space of trees in the work Double Plot, I would sometimes imagine myself to be at different heights; down on the ground, you’re only experiencing a certain part of the trunk and the roots. I was interested in this relationship where you can almost slap and feel this tree, and realise how majestic this thing actually is, how it has other lives on it. Exploring the consequences of extractive practices is a theme running throughout your work, from the early ‘Delta Stories’ series of 2005–06, a set of 18 drawings referencing Ken Saro-Wiwa’s activism in the Delta region of Nigeria, to your most recent sculptures and installations such as your ‘Beacon’ series from 2024, which includes extracts of plants and minerals that contain healing properties. How has your take on extractivism changed over the past 20 or so years you have been making art that engages with this issue? Art Monthly no. 478, July – August 2024 1

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