Otobong Nkanga
©Courtesy of the Artist
Otobong Nkanga made the tapestry Infinite Yield as part of her exhibition Bruises and Shine at M HKA. She started from her drawings and redesigned them on a large scale. The work thematizes the natural wealth of the earth and its exploitation under the influence of supply and demand in a globalized world. Nkanga wants to expose the relationships between the landscape, people and labour. The artist not only addresses situations, but also makes active proposals for thinking about contemporary problems. For example, she investigates the possibility of reinterpreting extracted pits from abandoned mines as underground monuments. This image may seem to refer to surrealistic paintings in the form the artist develops, but her content is very different; the human body is presented as a part of the global natural ecosystem.
Nowadays human intervention into the natural environment and the harm to it is so strong even during a relatively peaceful time. Wars also becoming a part of the ecosystem and have their impact on the economical and ecological global environment both quite literally and indirectly.