Otobong Nkanga’s works examine ideas around cultural and personal memory in relation to land and its resources. Activities and performance permeate and motivate her photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and video, though various works are thematically connected through architecture and landscape. Nkanga reflects metonymically on the use and cultural value connected to natural resources, exploring how meaning and function connects to culture, and how an individual product consolidates multiple roles and histories.

In 2014, she participated in 14 Rooms at the Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel and Theater Basel in Basel, Switzerland; the 8th Berlin Biennale in Berlin, Germany; and the symposium ‘Landings: Confrontation and Confession’ at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Presentations include Across the board: Politics of Representation, where Nkanga performed a proposal of her ongoing installation series Contained Measures in Tate Modern’s Tanks in London, the UK in 2012. Nkanga was the recipient of the prestigious Yanghyun Prize in 2015.