Sandra Mujinga | |
---|---|
Born | 1989 |
Nationality | Norwegian-Congolese |
Education | Malmö Art Academy |
Awards | Preis der Nationalgalerie 2021 |
Website | http://sandramujinga.com |
Sandra Mujinga (born 1989) is a Norwegian video and installation artist born in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and known for her work in textiles, video, sculpture and installations. Her work draws upon Afrofuturism, posthumanism and science fiction, and often both uses and critiques technology.
Sandra Mujinga was born in 1989 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and moved to Norway as a child, where she grew up in Oslo and on Nesodden. Her mother, who died when Mujinga was 15, [1] studied fashion, and always had an interest in creativity, although the poor pay in fashion led her to find employment outside of the industry. [2] As a teenager, Mujinga wanted to become an architect, but wasn't accepted to the school she applied to, and began studying at Malmö Art Academy instead. [2] After art school she lived and worked in Oslo and Berlin until 2023, when she moved to New York. [3]
Her artistic breakthrough was featured in an episode of the television series Kunstnerliv (Artist's life) by the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK in 2024. [4]
Mujinga's work "poignantly speaks to Black representation, surveillance in society, and post-humanist and Afrofuturist ideas", [5] and often uses new technologies such as holograms and video installations. She includes her own body in some of her works. For example, her three-channel video installation Pervasive Light (2021) features Mujinga wearing a cloak that combined with the use of a greenscreen causes her body to disappear, or as one reviewer described it, "causes darkness to swallow her body". [6]
In Sentinels of Change (2021), which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2022, large human-like shapes were draped in recycled textiles and saturated in green light. [7] One reviewer described this as being "immersed in the post-apocalyptic, humanity-deprived world of artist Sandra Mujinga". [8]
In 2021 Mujinga won the Preis der Nationalgalerie , Germany's most prestigious contemporary art award for artists under 40. [9] The jury celebrated the "ghostly-looking figures made of interwoven lengths of fabric that seem to float through the Hamburger Bahnhof exhibition spaces", and Mujinga's "great sensitivity for the materials used." [9]
In 2023 Mujinga moved to New York, supported by a one-year artist grant from Office for Contemporary Art Norway. [3] Her work Flo, a hologram installation named after her mother, was purchased by MoMA, [10] and her work Spectral Keepers (2020) was exhibited in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York [11] as part of the Going Dark exhibition in 2023. [12] Flo is a ghost-like figure in a dark room, projected using the 18th century Pepper's ghost technique where a mirror reflects an image so it appears like a ghost. The figure is enacted by performance artist Adrian Blount who is wearing a wearable, leather sculpture made by Mujinga that is inspired by the Jamaican body builder Anne-Marie Crooks. [13] [14] The figure flickers, almost disappearing into the darkness, and according to the artist, this ephemeral presence represents the paradox of visuality for Black people: "Up till now Black bodies are either visible and being policed, or they're completely invisible." [14] Flo has been described as ghost-like, and is named for Mujinga's mother, who died when the artist was only 15. [1] This echos the commercial uses of holograms to depict and reanimate the deceased, and has also been described as the Black practice of "wake work", which is a practice of care for the dead theorised by the Black literary scholar Christina Sharpe. [14]
In 2024 Mujinga was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize, a global award for artists under 35. [3] [15]
Mujinga's work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, [21] and the Muzeum Sztuki, Warsaw. [22]
Oslo is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of 709,037 in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022, and the metropolitan area had an estimated population of 1,546,706 in 2021.
Munch Museum, marketed as Munch since 2020, is an art museum in Bjørvika, Oslo, Norway dedicated to the life and works of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, were a Swiss artist duo that collaborated beginning in 1979. Their best-known work is the film Der Lauf der Dinge, described by The Guardian as being "post apocalyptic", as it concerned chain reactions and the ways in which objects flew, crashed and exploded across the studio in which it was shot. Fischli lives and works in Zürich; Weiss died on 27 April 2012.
Georges Adéagbo is a Beninese sculptor known for his work with found objects.
Emily Jacir is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker.
Lee Bul is a South Korean artist who works in various mediums, including performance, sculpture, installation, architecture, printmaking, and media art. Lives and works in Seoul, Lee's work has extended from the late 1980s to the present.
A K Dolven is a Norwegian artist. She works across painting, film, sound, sculpture and interventions in public space.
Nandipha Mntambo is a South African artist who has become famous for her sculptures, videos and photographs that focus on human female body and identity by using natural, organic materials. Her art style has been self described as eclectic and androgynous. She is best known for her cowhide sculptures that connects the human form to nature.
Shilpa Gupta is a contemporary Indian artist based in Mumbai, India. Gupta's artistic practise encompasses a wide range of mediums, including manipulated found objects, video art, interactive computer-based installations, and performance.
Tom Sandberg was a Norwegian art photographer.
Teresa Margolles is a conceptual artist, photographer, videographer, and performance artist. As an artist she researches the social causes and consequences of death.
Zarina Hashmi, known professionally as Zarina, was an Indian American artist and printmaker based in New York City. Her work spans drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Associated with the minimalist movement, her work utilized abstract and geometric forms in order to evoke a spiritual reaction from the viewer.
Koo Jeong A is a South-Korean born mixed-media and installation artist.
Sandra Konstance Nygård Borch is a Norwegian politician who served as the minister of research and higher education from 2023 to 2024 until her resignation over the extensive plagiarism of her master's thesis. As minister she had launched a crackdown on students' reuse of their own texts, so-called "self-plagiarism," leading to criticism from many academics who argued that reuse of one's own work is not plagiarism or research misconduct. She previously served as minister of agriculture and food from 2021 to 2023. A member of the Centre Party, she served as the leader of the Centre Youth from 2011 to 2013, while simultaneously serving as a deputy MP from her home constituency of Troms from 2009 to 2013. She was elected a permanent representative in 2017. In January 2024 it was revealed that significant parts of her master's thesis had been plagiarised. She announced her resignation in the evening of 19 January 2024. She risks losing her degree.
Lene Berg is a Norwegian film director and artist, who works in Oslo and Berlin. Her artistic praxis includes film, installation, collage and text-based work. She has produced a number of projects in public spaces and directed four independently produced feature-length films. She represented Norway in the 55th Venice Biennale with the film Dirty Young Loose (2013). In 2022 she was invited to the prestigious Norwegian Festival Exhibition at the Bergen Kunsthall for which she produced the large-scale exhibition Fra Far. In 2023 her novel with the same title was published by Kolon Forlag. She is a member of the Norwegian Visual Artist Guilds NBK & UKS, the Directors Guild of Norway and The Writers Guild of Norway. She co-founded the distribution agency Filmbyrået Jack and the production company VIDEONOVA.
Megan Rooney is a Canadian-born, London-based artist who creates paintings, sculptures, installations, performances and poetry. Rooney is known for integrating contrasting disciplines, such as painting, sculpture performance, into a single work. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011 and, prior to that, completed her BA at the University of Toronto in Canada. Her work has been shown in solo museum exhibitions at the Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020–21); Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019).
P. Staff is a contemporary visual and performance artist.
The Støre Cabinet is the incumbent government of the Kingdom of Norway, headed by Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre as Prime Minister. The government was appointed by King Harald V on 14 October 2021, following the parliamentary election on 13 September, consisting of the Labour Party (Ap) and the Centre Party (Sp) as a minority government.
Events in the year 2023 in Norway.
Martine Poppe, is a contemporary artist known for her pale oil paintings on sailcloth with climate and feminism as central themes in her work. Poppe’s paintings are based on digital photographs of nature and carry the effects of diffracted light, overexposed photography, and the pixelation of blown-up digital images, resulting in a unique blend of abstraction and representation.