No Be Today Story O!

No Be Today Story O!
Otobong Edet Nkanga
Amsterdam: Lumen Travo Gallery, 2010
Smithsonian Libraries
“This is old gist”

“No be today story o” is Nigerian Pidgin English that means “The story is not of recent times but it still has not been resolved.”  Or more simply, “This is old gist; it is not new.”  With Otobong Edet Nkanga as our filter, we see the significant childhood and teen-age memories that still haunt her, memories of lost innocence and homeland.

No be today story o! by Otobong Nkanga, 2010. Home. African Art Museum artists' books exhibit research image.

“Filtered memories” and “Social consequences” are the two series into which Nkanga organizes her visual autobiography.

No be today story o! by Otobong Nkanga, 2010. Social Consequences, Constructivism. African Art Museum artists' books exhibit research image.

Different types of violence are depicted in both, from physical to mental and even self-inflicted, along with loss.[1]

No be today story o! by Otobong Nkanga, 2010. Loss in Bubbles  LtoR 01. African Art Museum artists' books exhibit research image.

No Be Today Story O! is a Singer-stitched brochure divided into four chapters, each containing ten color prints of Nkanga’s drawings.  The original drawings were made with acrylic and stickers on paper; no text is included on the drawings, but each is titled.  The book is encased in a silkscreened translucent envelope.

No be today story o! by Otobong Nkanga, 2010. Six Inches. African Art Museum artists' books exhibit research image.

The collaborators on this artists' book are Paul Wyber (silkscreen), Novak (graphic design), Lecturis (printing), and Mondriaan Stichting (stitching).  Michelle Christensen and Florian Conrad wrote the essay on the envelope cover.  The book was published by Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam.

About the Artist

Otobong Nkanga (born in 1974) hails from Kano, Nigeria, but lived mostly in Lagos during her formative years.  When she was a teenager, her mother—at that time working with UNESCO in Lagos—was transferred to Paris, where Nkanga studied art with Diana Schops at the British School of Paris.  After moving back to Nigeria, Nkanga studied art at Obafemi Awolowo University and continued her studies in France at the École nationale superieure des beaux-arts.  She met her husband while on a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and they moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where they now live.

Nkanga’s “artworks are a result of observations, investigations and sensations of material and spaces.”[2]  She is a visual and performance artist who does not limit herself to a particular medium; she works with photography, sculpture, and installations.  Her art that is based on her personal history and socially constructed realties reflects a preoccupation with (re)location[3] and is influenced by the landscapes and places she has lived.

No be today story o! by Otobong Nkanga, 2010. Loss in Bubbles LtoR 04. African Art Museum artists' books exhibit research image.

Bibliography

Kabwe, Mwenya B.   "Otobong Nkanga.” In Flow: the Studio Museum in Harlem, edited by Christine Kim: pages 94-95, 113.  New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2008.

Nkanga, Otobong Edet.   “Artist focus: Otobong Nkanga." Newsletter / Centre for Contemporary Art (Lagos, Nigeria) no. 10 (September-December 2010): pages 4-5.

Pirotte, Philippe.  "Social consequences." Art South Africa (Cape Town) 9 (2010): pages 66-69.

Raimi-Abraham, Feyi.    “Zaynnah conversation . . . with Otobong Nkanga.” Zaynnah magazine 16 (January 2013).  http://zaynnahmagazine.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-conversation-with-otobong-nkanga.html


[1]  Nkanga’s mother died in a car accident in 1992

[2]  Feyi Raimi-Abraham.   “Zaynnah conversation . . . with Otobong Nkanga” (2013).

[3]  Mwenya B. Kabwe, “Otobong Nkanga,” in Flow: The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2008), pages 94-95.