At the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Otobong Nkanga’s first Parisian monographic exhibition unfolds as a poetic and political meditation on earth and matter. Through tapestries, performances and installations, the artist invites viewers to rethink their bodily, ethical and emotional position within the landscapes they inhabit.
The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is featuring the multidisciplinary artist Otobong Nkanga’s first monographic exhibition in a Parisian Museum entitled I dreamt of you in colours. Until 22nd February 2026 the exquisite show raises questions about the complex ties binding humans to the earth, raw materials, and collective memory. The Nigerian born artist, now living in Antwerp, Belgium, is well known for tapestries, drawings, photographs, installations, videos and performances related to ecology and relationships between the body and the territory: “I think of the Earth as a being, like our body: water, air, tree, stone, plant are beings like our body” she was quoted in 2022. In Venice, Italy, the artist was awarded the Special Mention Award of the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2019. The same year her major work From Where I Stand from 2015, was shown in Nkanga’s first UK museum show in the Tate St Ives in Cornwall and then acquired at the Friends of the Musée d’Art Moderne gala banquet in 2022.
FROM WHERE I STAND: THE TAPESTRY OF STONE
In the ongoing Paris exhibition, the large carpet installation From Where I Stand is considered the “center piece”. It takes its graphic pattern and geometric outline from magnified flakes of mica, a unique layered mineral of which tiny fragments are photographed through an electron-microscope. The faceted, brittle and fractured crystalline structure evokes human states of being. During a public performance earlier this year the artist herself “activated” what she calls a “tapestry of stone”. When Otobong Nkanga walked into the crowded room, she was radiant and warmly welcomed her guests and friends one by one. When she passed in front of strangers she whispered in fluent French since she had lived in Paris and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts. Dressed in earthy colours – beige, brown – she wore a circular white plate around her waist, a kind of vendor’s tray. At a short glance you could see various stones and metals, plants, wire, pliers, and a pair of work gloves.
THE CIRCLE AS METHOD
Next to and behind her walked another woman, Utibe-Abasi Nkanga, dressed in a more Afro-centric style. “She’ s my sister” Otobong Nkanga explained smiling, changing into English. Then the sisters took off their shoes and walked inside the installation, inviting some of the people to follow them. To break the ice and cope with the winter cold in the museum building, she asked the audience to clap their hands. Once, twice, and then, in no time at all, the Nkanga-Sisters were sitting in a circle of diverse people, old and young, European and African, alternative and elegant-understated. Slowly, an intimate, heartfelt, almost affectionate dialogue developed about everything Otobong Nkanga had brought with her and which, as ars pro toto, addressed materials and themes covered in the exhibition. “From where you stand, what is your own position? How do you look at something? What is the story that comes out of what you’ve seen?” were the artist’s questions. The public warmly responded and it was a rare calm moment of common reflection together with the internationally acclaimed artist.
CONSTELLATIONS AND FUTURE TRAJECTORIES
Since Otobong Nkanga had worked together with the late Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh, active in the critical field of the arts community in a pan-African and international scope, she will hopefully take part of the upcoming 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia entitled In Minor Keys. Following the sudden passing of the Curator Koyo Kouoh in 2025, the Exhibition will be carried out with the contribution of the advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira and Rasha Salti; the editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and the assistant Rory Tsapayi.
LINK
- Becoming Academy: Marina Abramović in Venice - September 18, 2026
- The Generative Dispositif of Institutional Memory. An Interview with Dayanita Singh - June 19, 2026
- Mark Rothko in Florence - March 27, 2026
