Photo: Akona Kenqu
Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi (1980) was born in New York and grew up there, as well as in Harare and Johannesburg, South Africa. She divides her time between studio work, performance, and navigating the field of art as social practice. Nkosi is constitutionally curious about the stories we tell each other, whether they are the narratives that are sold to us or the stories that are passed down in families. What do these stories do for and to us? Do they help us to live, or blind us, or both? What other stories can be told? These are the questions to which Nkosi returns again and again in her work.
Her work has been shown in various international institutions such as the ifa Gallery (Berlin); the South London Gallery and Tate Modern (London); the Museum of Contemporary Art (Rio de Janeiro); Standard Bank Gallery (Johannesburg); and the Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris). Nkosi obtained her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her artworks are included in private and corporate collections in Europe, South Africa, and the US.