Nnenna Okore Nigeria, b. 1975

Nnenna Okore (b. 1975, Canberra, Australia) is a Nigerian artist based in Chicago, among the leading sculptors of her generation. Raised in Nsukka, Nigeria, where she studied painting under El Anatsui, she transforms humble and discarded materials, burlap, cheesecloth, paper, rope, clay and, in her recent research, food-based bioplastics, into richly textured abstract sculptures and installations evoking roots, veins and flora. Her labour-intensive processes of fraying, teasing, twisting, dyeing and sewing, learned from the daily manual rhythms of Nigerian life, address ecology, transience, decay and regeneration. A Professor of Art at North Park University, Chicago, and a Fulbright Scholar, she has exhibited from the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and her works are held in museum collections across the United States, Africa and Brazil.