Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, whose pronouns are they and them, is a French-Gabonese interdisciplinary and conceptual artist who works with visual arts and live art performance.
They were born in the Woleu-Ntem region of Gabon. Bikoro has an education in Politics, Philosophy and Media Arts. As a child, they lived in France and the Netherlands as well as Gabon. During that time, they survived a 10-year battle with leukemia.
Interdisciplinary and conceptual artist, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro. | Source: nbikoro on Instagram
Their fight with cancer has influenced the narrative and methods in which they choose to create. This personal struggle for recovery and return to family pushed her visual language as well as setting goals to develop independent creative initiatives in the arts and culture.
The artist merges installations, sonic radio, live art performances, film and archives. Their work analyses processes of power and fictions in historical archives critically engaging in migrational struggles. They create environments for untold narratives of resistance movements by African women and indigenous communities. Embedded in their artistic narratives are testimonies of queering ecologies and postcolonial feminist experiences towards new monuments, reacting to the varied tones of societies shared between delusions and ritual.
One of Nathaie Bikoro’s installations. | Source: anguezomo-bikoro.com
Bikoro brings new investigations about the architectures of racism in cities, the archaeologies of urban spaces and economies of traditional systems by exposing the limitations of technologies as functional memory records. Their process also includes conversations of diaspora, migration, identities, titles and culture – to name a few.
Bikoro’s aims and objectives are reported to include converging arts and sciences into their own practice and research towards developing a Cancer Recovery Arts Centre. Bikoro decided to do this by incorporating creative spaces for interaction for children and adults in Libreville, Lambarene and Bitam in Gabon and by developing educational collaborative community projects.
An installation by Nathalie Bikoro. | Source: anguezomo-bikoro.com
Their most significant contributions have been shown in Venice Biennale (2018); Dak’art Biennale Senegal (2012 & 2018); Smithsonian Museum of African Art Washington DC (2013); La Otra Biennale De Bogota Colombia (2013); Tiwani Contemporary London (2012); Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (2022), Museum of African Art Johannesburg (2011); Michael Stevenson Gallery Cape Town (2011); Tate Britain London (2009); Kalao Pan African Galleries Bilbao (2014); 798 Art District Gallery Beijing (2015); Havana Biennale (2019); Oxford Museum UK (2014); Bedfordbury Gallery London (2010) and South London Gallery (2010).
Mba Bikoro is the recipient of several awards including TURN Curatorial Fellowship Nairobi (2022), Künstlerische Forschung Artist Award (2022-23), British Arts Council (2016), PRIMARY Artist Fellowship Award Nottingham (2019), Preis Der National Gallerie Award Nominee Hambuger Bahnoff Berlin (2019), Goethe Institute Bahia Salvador (2023) Fondation Blachère and Afrique Soleil Mali for Best Artist awarded at the 10th Dakar Biennale (2012), Best Discovery Award at New York Cutlog (2013), Ercillas Prize for Best Exhibition Award at FIG Bilbao (2014), HANGAR Research Fellowship Lisbon/Angola (2016).
Sources:
Anguezomo Mboulou Mba Bikoro – About Mba Bikoro
Nathalie Bikoro – Ed Cross
Nathalie Mba Bikoro – Arena for Contemporary African, African American and Caribbean Art
Candice Stewart is a Jamaican content writer specializing in human interest feature stories. She is a web content writer, blogger, and budding podcaster.
She holds an MA in Communication for Social and Behaviour Change and a BSc. in Psychology from the University of the West Indies (UWI, Mona).
Follow her blog at thesuburbangirlja.com, where she shares stories and life lessons through real-life experiences.
