Nathalie Mba Bikoro
(Gabon/France)
Biography
Nathalie Mba Bikoro is a visual artist, educator, activist, and director of the DNA Arts Foundation (Gabon) and Art Lab (London). She has exhibited and performed internationally, receiving numerous awards including the National Finnish Presentation Award for Best Performance Artist (2010) and two international awards for Best Artist in Senegal during the Dak’Art Biennale (2012). Her work has been featured widely in print and media, including on AlJazeera and the BBC documentary W ho Are You Calling an African Artist?
Bikoro’s work and practice uses performance, printmaking, media, installation, and social encounters to address ecology, colonialism, social struggle, and personal emancipation. During the 2009 Gabonese elections, Bikoro devised an experiment called the Squat Museum as a means for local communities to imagine ways towards self-sustainability. The project was a travelling gallery space that visited neighborhoods and villages in and around Libreville, Bitam, and Omboué, exhibiting in an old car and trailer and on a floating pirogue boat. The programs presented a series of contemporary performances, dialogues, sculptural reenactments, and activities that reinterpreted the role of Griot storytelling and the relations between people and foods through drawing, games, video and photography.