Tiedto the Other Side
VICTORIA KINGHAM
There’s much to admire about the work of Otobong Nkanga, a Nigerian-Belgian artist whose extraordinary tapestry Tied to the Other Side fills one wall of the Foreshore Gallery in the new Hastings Contemporary exhibition The Edge: Where the Land Meets the Sea. Now in her early fifties, Nkanga is probably at her optimum in terms of artistic achievement. She has exhibited all over the world – see her web page for full details – and there seems to be no limit to either her output or the media she chooses in which to create.
Otobong Nkanga, Tied to the Other Side
There are no details currently available about how this was worked, but I suspect in the same way that Grayson Perry produces tapestries, that is in collaboration with a company who produce digital weave files, and another who actualises the designs on high-tech digital Jacquard looms in specific textile media. It’s an incredible thing. A landscape neither sea nor land, human limbs either submerged or sprouting, searchlights, a kingfisher – it can be interpreted in 100 ways. Maybe that’s the point: her work (in all kinds of media) has been extensively exhibited in major galleries; it consistently highlights the jagged relationship (or Edge) between the land, its natural resources, and how it relates to humanity and human artefacts.
The presence of this work in the exhibition indicates the national importance of Hastings’ local art gallery, which deserves to be treasured and nurtured.
A selection: tinyurl.com/5bk4mhk4. Nkanga’s webpage: otobong-nkanga.com. Hastings Contemporary exhibition page: hastingscontemporary.org/event-category/exhibitions
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