Otobong Nkanga Named the 2025 Nasher Prize Laureate

Through a broad range of materials, used to orchestrate an equally broad range of artistic practices, the 2025 Nasher Prize Laureate, Otobong Nkanga, weaves together powerful works that delve into the complex, often fragile relationships between humans, the land, and its resources, touching on issues of consumption, global circulation, connectivity, and care.

Otobong Nkanga, was born in Kano, Nigeria in 1974, grew up in Lagos and Paris, and lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Over the past 20 years she has been producing evocative works that speak to migration and her own movement in the world, the exhaustive use of planetary resources, and the interconnectedness of people and the land. Her enigmatic art, which relies on extensive research into the places it inhabits, frequently uses raw materials such as minerals, metals, stones, and plants to elicit new meanings, stored memories, and emotional connections for her audience.

“The work of Otobong Nkanga makes manifest the myriad connections—historical, sociological, economic, cultural, and spiritual— that we have to the materials that comprise our lives,” says Nasher Sculpture Center Director Jeremy Strick. “Delving deeply into the variegated meanings these materials take on, Nkanga’s work makes clear the essential place of sculpture in contemporary life.”

As a part of this honor, Nkanga will be presented with $100,000 and an award designed by Renzo Piano, architect of the Nasher Sculpture Center, at a ceremony in Dallas on April 5, 2025 alongside an exhibition and published monograph.