“I'm really interested in the history of Chicago as it relates to both Black and Indigenous histories and folk stories and exploring the role of the trickster in both of those cultures. I am interested in how they speak to histories of resistance amongst Black and Indigenous peoples in Chicago and in the US and Canada more broadly.“
Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist, researcher, and writer. Nnebe’s practice mobilizes vernacular forms and everyday infrastructures—foodways, nail salons, native languages—to construct counter-archives of Blackness rooted in anti-imperial relationality. In their play with spatiality and coded visual lexicons, her work demonstrates how social positionings shape regimes of perception and legibility. Cutting across installation, sculpture and lens-based media, they establish their own conditions for legibility: Black women’s emotional lives, labour, and knowledge emerge not as subjects to be deciphered but as the epistemic ground through which meaning itself becomes possible.
Nnebe is a 2025 alumnus of the Jan van Eyck Academie and a 2023 Awardee of the G.A.S. Fellowship started by Yinka Shonibare CBE RE. Her work has been exhibited internationally including: Framer Framed (Amsterdam), NADA New York, the Art Museum of Toronto, and the Bowling Green State University Gallery. Institutional acquisitions include KADIST International, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist, researcher, and writer. Nnebe’s practice mobilizes vernacular forms and everyday infrastructures—foodways, nail salons, native languages—to construct counter-archives of Blackness rooted in anti-imperial relationality. In their play with spatiality and coded visual lexicons, her work demonstrates how social positionings shape regimes of perception and legibility. Cutting across installation, sculpture and lens-based media, they establish their own conditions for legibility: Black women’s emotional lives, labour, and knowledge emerge not as subjects to be deciphered but as the epistemic ground through which meaning itself becomes possible.
Nnebe is a 2025 alumnus of the Jan van Eyck Academie and a 2023 Awardee of the G.A.S. Fellowship started by Yinka Shonibare CBE RE. Her work has been exhibited internationally including: Framer Framed (Amsterdam), NADA New York, the Art Museum of Toronto, and the Bowling Green State University Gallery. Institutional acquisitions include KADIST International, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
What do you want Floating Museum’s community to know about your practice?
I’m a Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist. I’m really interested in exploring anti-imperial solidarities specifically between Black and Indigenous peoples. This is rooted in my background outside of the arts and specifically working in food policy with the Canadian government, where I learned a lot about food sovereignty issues around both Black and Indigenous food insecurity.
This is why I approach food and its movement and migration of food as a counter archive to colonial histories in a way that bridges both black and indigenous histories on Turtle Island. That’s something I want to explore in Chicago and is something that is a pretty prominent thing in my own practice.
Two other things that are closely related have to do with my interest in the movement of money and how to redirect money towards where it is most needed, specifically towards marginalized communities. This is based on my work providing funding to Black-led and Black-serving charities and non-profits, including through Canada's Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund.
I can use infrastructure within and outside of the arts to do this work. I have a project that moves money from the Global North towards women entrepreneurs in Lagos. I’m interested in how I can do something similar in Chicago and make connections to the work that I've already done in Nigeria. I am interested in financial infrastructure and how it can be repurposed towards mutual aid and also reparations.
I'm interested in being in conversation with anyone working in any of these areas: Black Indigenous food sovereignty, movement of money, social finance, social economy, and folk stories.
I’m a Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist. I’m really interested in exploring anti-imperial solidarities specifically between Black and Indigenous peoples. This is rooted in my background outside of the arts and specifically working in food policy with the Canadian government, where I learned a lot about food sovereignty issues around both Black and Indigenous food insecurity.
This is why I approach food and its movement and migration of food as a counter archive to colonial histories in a way that bridges both black and indigenous histories on Turtle Island. That’s something I want to explore in Chicago and is something that is a pretty prominent thing in my own practice.
Two other things that are closely related have to do with my interest in the movement of money and how to redirect money towards where it is most needed, specifically towards marginalized communities. This is based on my work providing funding to Black-led and Black-serving charities and non-profits, including through Canada's Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund.
I can use infrastructure within and outside of the arts to do this work. I have a project that moves money from the Global North towards women entrepreneurs in Lagos. I’m interested in how I can do something similar in Chicago and make connections to the work that I've already done in Nigeria. I am interested in financial infrastructure and how it can be repurposed towards mutual aid and also reparations.
I'm interested in being in conversation with anyone working in any of these areas: Black Indigenous food sovereignty, movement of money, social finance, social economy, and folk stories.
︎kosisochukwunnebe.com