image: family Bikoro photograph 1959 | courtesy of Nathalie Mba Bikoro
About
"Art should not only make pretty statements, but also make an impact on the lives of those who struggle or are oppressed". Michael Thompson
Described as one of the top leading female artist of Africa & acknowledged for strengthening the collective voice of women in art by Sharon Obuobi and reflecting Africa's progressive modernism through challenge and provocation by Yinka Shonibare MBE, 2013 sees the artist rooted between her continual journey exploring new narratives about community, political interventions, memory and heritage.
With an education in Politics, Philosophy and Media Arts, Bikoro leaves France and the UK to set out her work as an artist to return back to Gabon.
Her 10 year battle with Leukeamia Cancer during childhood in Gabon, the Netherlands and France has influenced the narrative and methods in which she chooses to create her work and this personal struggle to recovery and return back to her family has pushed her visual language as well as setting goals to develop independent creative initiatives in the arts and culture lead by local people.
Her aims and objectives are to incorporate converging arts and sciences into her own practice & research towards developing a Cancer Arts Centre Recovery through creative spaces for interaction for children & adults in Libreville, Lambarene & Bitam (Gabon) by developing educational collaborative community projects lead by local people with a wider international dialogue across Latin America.
In 1989, Bikoro was diagnosed with Leukeamia cancer during early childhood in Gabon. With only 2 months left to live, no adequate medical treatments available and weak citizen securities triggered by a political coup d'etat making rise for tribal conflicts in suburbs, Nathalie's grandfather helped for medical treatment and leave to the Netherlands for his grand-daughter with a 4 year hospitalised treatment before moving to France with her parents and continuing phisiotherapy treatments until 1999.
After full medical clearance from cancer, Nathalie returns to her father´s land in Gabon in 2007. Back home, described as one of the most richest and advanced political GDP´s and democracies of Africa, she meets a fractured family living in the capital city´s increased poverties and slums of Libreville, a country afraid of its political dictature leadership, with little access to education, history and culture, rife polluted environments in towns and coasts with exploitations of lands by foreign oil industries and displaced peoples through industrial pressures in the rainforests that are deforesting the environment, drying up its natural water pools and rivers.
In 2009 she devellops a creative project initiative The Squat Museum as part of her foundation DNA Arts during one of the most turbulent and historical changing moments of Gabon in the 21st century, its first political elections in over 40 years. In travelling the country she experiences at first hand the lack of human rights and democracy through mass shootings of peaceful protestors in Port-Gentil, local tribal conflicts leading to orphaned or kidnapped children and witnesses the corruptions of political elections village to village, town to city.
Continuing her vision of fighting violence with creative methods, Nathalie is arrested twice by local authorities considering her work as „white man´s voodoo“ and could be released with a hefty fine. During the next years she considers that her work and the struggles of her people do not limit to one country but also to other places where she works & lives in Senegal, Congo, the favelas of Brazilian cities, Poland and the US. After suffering from malaria in 2010, Nathalie escapes a brutal death tribal kidnapping along the river Goue in the Omboue region in Gabon due to the changing teritorial pressures influenced by the gold mining industries.
In returning to her country in young adulthood, Nathalie discovers the brutal history of her family´s past, where two of her grandfathers were assassinated by political direction in 1967 and in 2010 and the stories of her great-grandfather during the 1st and 2nd World War in Mimbeng and in France both in German Nazi concentration camps.
With this knowledge of self-discovery of her heritage and the memory & experiences of racism in her childhood past sometimes brutally experienced in France, and the present struggles of reuniting with her families, Nathalie feels that art is not just a necessity but an urgency in recognising humanity´s responsibilites to others and their conscious actions in their communities. She breaks away from the abstract notions of definition through nationality, race and colour and recognises her roots as those where her responsibilities and actions in life interact with mixed communities of the world, where places and peoples have endured violence, brutalities both physically, spiritually and philosophically. She believes that in developing alternative communication and creative tools for life, people will redefine their identities, create their own voices and solidify foundations for freedom.
This will trigger her beginning, translated into the emergence of a renaissance into visual imagery suspended between reality and imagination, tradition and modernity using the popular childrens’ tale of Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass. Influenced by the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and the literatures of Lewis Carroll and Paul Cesaire, she ties together her experiences of home and family across continents to generate a multi-cultural childrens’ book about our inventions for heroes, issued in all schools across Gabon.
This work is quickly picked up by world curators like Christine Eyenne and Ed Cross and after a series of exhibitions in Europe and Africa including Museum Africa Johannesburg 2010 exhibiting together with South African artist Mary Sibande, the series of Alice In Wonderland is chosen for the 10th Dak’Art Biennale, winning 2 international prizes of Fondation Blachere France and Afrique Soleil Mali awarded by the newly appointed Minister of Arts & Culture and artist Youssou N’Dour. Bikoro is represented by Ed Cross Fine Arts and Kamba Gallery.
She also exhibits her first solo show in Senegal’s St Louis The Yellow Passage: The Peoples’ Waltz (2012) together with Marie-Caroline Camara. Marie-Caroline and Elsa Dansokho, daughter of exiled Senegalese politician Amath Dansokho, become influencial mentors and friends to Bikoro. Her performance both political and confrontal, affirms her homage to the people of St Louis and to the forgotten metisse family Deves where she inaugurates a new street as Passage Deves.
She meets writer and filmmaker Nana Ofiriatta-Ayim from Ghana helping to launch her childrens’ book The Tightrope Walker in 2011 and later meets international filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako director of Bamako (2006), his wife Maji da Abdi and writer Simon Njami.
After her first UK solo exhibition in London The Middle Passage: Alice In Wonderland (2012) by Tiwani Contemporary and CCA Lagos, she is quickly picked up by artist Yinka Shonibare MBE as one of the “best emerging female African artist” and his experience is a great encourgement to Nathalie.
In Brazilia, she is invited by Corpo Informaticos Politico and FLAAC international political arts organisations to lecture and present her work. She meets renowned Brazilian artists Bia Madeira and Larissa Ferreira working on a curatorial project bringing closer relations between Brazilian and African cultures on a multilayered dialogue across borders and languages. At the same time, the artist experiences her first awareness of the political battles by Indian Black indigeneous peoples and their struggles for land and heritage rights against governments. She is involved in a series of protests and spends time with individuals and their families which opens her heart to a wider consciousness of community, responsibility and discovery. It affirms the similarities for her about roots, family and heritage experienced in struggles in other countries like Gabon, South Africa and Senegal. In August 2012, she is caught in the cross-fires between ethnic clans in Johannesburg during the miners’ protests were 34 victims got shot by police authorities. In the previous year, she is working with the communities of the favelas of Santa Lucia in Belo Horizonte to develop a creative concept that would bridge the cultural gaps and dissolve tensions between class divisions and imaginary stereotypes of the notions of the other particular in Brazil. She builds 2 performances, the first in which she is arrested by local police for allegedly practising ‘African voodoo’ and the second where she creates a lake of fire built with paper boats by the community holding candles and dreams of the local participants. A third performance hosted by Scesc Palladium sees a collaborative piece with Brazilian artist Wagner Tempos Rossi, where she is washing white sheets in wine and whipping them dry across the floor before being tattooed with the slave trade boat going back to the direction of Africa.
After her performance Without Sanctuary in 2012, the Gabonese leaves a deep impression on many including international artist and teacher Merle Van Den Bosch who compares Bikoro’s works with the passion, fragility, strength and personal life tragedies of Frida Khalo. Fascinated by her expression and language, Merle embarks on a lasting friendship and collaboration with Bikoro to work together on a series of performance workshops across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe developing personal expression and talents of young students.
In the early 2000’s, Bikoro works with German artist collaborator and mentor Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smiths developing visual practices beyond materialities and approaches new interactions and expressions which she brings from earlier therapy methods during her 10 year leukaemia cancer treatment from the years preceding. She develops her unique style that breaks away from any conventional rule or theory and practice in Flux performance art history and narrates issues of current quotidian struggles across borders and continents working from Africa to Latin America. Involved in underground performance arts and alternative practices, Bikoro’s involvement with London’s newest underground scenes ArtEvict and Performance Space is caught with an interview session with radio Resonance FM London part of the ALISN EAO Conference in 2011. Bikoro’s performances are quickly noticed by 2010 with Last Independence (2009) and The Uncomfortable Truth (2010) and showcased in Basel’s international Art fairs curated by Christine Eyenne for Focus Contemporary both in 2010 and 2011. In 2011 she wins Best Awards for Best Performance Artist of the Year in Sweden (NSD Lulea 2011) and Best Performance of the Year in Finland nominated by renowned Finnish artist Willhem Willemus (Presentatioo 2011). She is then invited for the second time in Finland’s best Arts Academy TEAK in Helsinki for LAPsody 3rd International Conference & Festival for Live Art & Performance Studies that included the presentation of StasiDuck and a performance together with Zambian artist Baaba Chakeh Das on a collaborative piece titled Song Of Solomon. In Finland she meets UK artist Oreet Ashery and Finnish artist Roi Varaa. By 2010, she is collaborating with American artist Ron Athey on his installation series first released at Queen Mary’s University in London. By 2012, together with Nigerian artist Jelili Atiku, they foster a new creative and academic platform for Performance Visual Arts of Africa in and out of the continent, a meeting point for artists, curators and wider audiences.
Influenced by the literatures of writers and friends Nana Ofiriatta-Ayim, Boubacar Diop, Louis Camara and Achille Membe, she starts to break new conceptions of the notions of identity by introducing two terms explored in her philosophical writings; the crystal moment after apoptosis and the cannibal as regeneration.
Following the British Museum's public presentation "Benjamin, Benin & Britain: A Diamond Jubillee Celebration" in London with Leo Amesota and in conversation with Tate Britain's international Arts curator Paul Goodwin, Bikoro extends her literary contributions after her last published work with Geothe Institut entitled "Identity Nudity The Political Power of Contemporary Live Art Performance in Ato Malinda; The agorical spaces of performativity between the arts and political historycisation" published by Contact Zones NRB Kenya.
Continuing her etching and lithography works into 2013, she begins the launch of the Brick Moon after Elverett Hale’s short story released in 1892. Nations gather to create a brick moon that will be launched into the sky as a referral point to those lost at land and sea. Its light will be able to foster navigations for all people and find where and who they are. Before the moon is launched as a first satellite, it must retrieve walls of broken myths, broken tensions, xenophobias and prejudices to be changed then transformed into new material and a new beginning for emancipation and redemption. A work across four continents, a story about history past and present, cultural creolisations oscillating between tradition and modernity, we have passed the Renaissance, here comes the future generation.
Continuing her Doctorate Research Fellowship in Germany, Nathalie promises an access to visual cultures and academic contributions in the next seasons including the publication book series of Alice In Wonderland, Performance & Visual Cultures and the opening of her new Contemporary Art Gallery in Berlin that will comprise an array of diverse educational programmes, international conferences, alternative visual arts, artists´ residencies and local shop.
Described as one of the top leading female artist of Africa & acknowledged for strengthening the collective voice of women in art by Sharon Obuobi and reflecting Africa's progressive modernism through challenge and provocation by Yinka Shonibare MBE, 2013 sees the artist rooted between her continual journey exploring new narratives about community, political interventions, memory and heritage.
With an education in Politics, Philosophy and Media Arts, Bikoro leaves France and the UK to set out her work as an artist to return back to Gabon.
Her 10 year battle with Leukeamia Cancer during childhood in Gabon, the Netherlands and France has influenced the narrative and methods in which she chooses to create her work and this personal struggle to recovery and return back to her family has pushed her visual language as well as setting goals to develop independent creative initiatives in the arts and culture lead by local people.
Her aims and objectives are to incorporate converging arts and sciences into her own practice & research towards developing a Cancer Arts Centre Recovery through creative spaces for interaction for children & adults in Libreville, Lambarene & Bitam (Gabon) by developing educational collaborative community projects lead by local people with a wider international dialogue across Latin America.
In 1989, Bikoro was diagnosed with Leukeamia cancer during early childhood in Gabon. With only 2 months left to live, no adequate medical treatments available and weak citizen securities triggered by a political coup d'etat making rise for tribal conflicts in suburbs, Nathalie's grandfather helped for medical treatment and leave to the Netherlands for his grand-daughter with a 4 year hospitalised treatment before moving to France with her parents and continuing phisiotherapy treatments until 1999.
After full medical clearance from cancer, Nathalie returns to her father´s land in Gabon in 2007. Back home, described as one of the most richest and advanced political GDP´s and democracies of Africa, she meets a fractured family living in the capital city´s increased poverties and slums of Libreville, a country afraid of its political dictature leadership, with little access to education, history and culture, rife polluted environments in towns and coasts with exploitations of lands by foreign oil industries and displaced peoples through industrial pressures in the rainforests that are deforesting the environment, drying up its natural water pools and rivers.
In 2009 she devellops a creative project initiative The Squat Museum as part of her foundation DNA Arts during one of the most turbulent and historical changing moments of Gabon in the 21st century, its first political elections in over 40 years. In travelling the country she experiences at first hand the lack of human rights and democracy through mass shootings of peaceful protestors in Port-Gentil, local tribal conflicts leading to orphaned or kidnapped children and witnesses the corruptions of political elections village to village, town to city.
Continuing her vision of fighting violence with creative methods, Nathalie is arrested twice by local authorities considering her work as „white man´s voodoo“ and could be released with a hefty fine. During the next years she considers that her work and the struggles of her people do not limit to one country but also to other places where she works & lives in Senegal, Congo, the favelas of Brazilian cities, Poland and the US. After suffering from malaria in 2010, Nathalie escapes a brutal death tribal kidnapping along the river Goue in the Omboue region in Gabon due to the changing teritorial pressures influenced by the gold mining industries.
In returning to her country in young adulthood, Nathalie discovers the brutal history of her family´s past, where two of her grandfathers were assassinated by political direction in 1967 and in 2010 and the stories of her great-grandfather during the 1st and 2nd World War in Mimbeng and in France both in German Nazi concentration camps.
With this knowledge of self-discovery of her heritage and the memory & experiences of racism in her childhood past sometimes brutally experienced in France, and the present struggles of reuniting with her families, Nathalie feels that art is not just a necessity but an urgency in recognising humanity´s responsibilites to others and their conscious actions in their communities. She breaks away from the abstract notions of definition through nationality, race and colour and recognises her roots as those where her responsibilities and actions in life interact with mixed communities of the world, where places and peoples have endured violence, brutalities both physically, spiritually and philosophically. She believes that in developing alternative communication and creative tools for life, people will redefine their identities, create their own voices and solidify foundations for freedom.
This will trigger her beginning, translated into the emergence of a renaissance into visual imagery suspended between reality and imagination, tradition and modernity using the popular childrens’ tale of Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass. Influenced by the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and the literatures of Lewis Carroll and Paul Cesaire, she ties together her experiences of home and family across continents to generate a multi-cultural childrens’ book about our inventions for heroes, issued in all schools across Gabon.
This work is quickly picked up by world curators like Christine Eyenne and Ed Cross and after a series of exhibitions in Europe and Africa including Museum Africa Johannesburg 2010 exhibiting together with South African artist Mary Sibande, the series of Alice In Wonderland is chosen for the 10th Dak’Art Biennale, winning 2 international prizes of Fondation Blachere France and Afrique Soleil Mali awarded by the newly appointed Minister of Arts & Culture and artist Youssou N’Dour. Bikoro is represented by Ed Cross Fine Arts and Kamba Gallery.
She also exhibits her first solo show in Senegal’s St Louis The Yellow Passage: The Peoples’ Waltz (2012) together with Marie-Caroline Camara. Marie-Caroline and Elsa Dansokho, daughter of exiled Senegalese politician Amath Dansokho, become influencial mentors and friends to Bikoro. Her performance both political and confrontal, affirms her homage to the people of St Louis and to the forgotten metisse family Deves where she inaugurates a new street as Passage Deves.
She meets writer and filmmaker Nana Ofiriatta-Ayim from Ghana helping to launch her childrens’ book The Tightrope Walker in 2011 and later meets international filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako director of Bamako (2006), his wife Maji da Abdi and writer Simon Njami.
After her first UK solo exhibition in London The Middle Passage: Alice In Wonderland (2012) by Tiwani Contemporary and CCA Lagos, she is quickly picked up by artist Yinka Shonibare MBE as one of the “best emerging female African artist” and his experience is a great encourgement to Nathalie.
In Brazilia, she is invited by Corpo Informaticos Politico and FLAAC international political arts organisations to lecture and present her work. She meets renowned Brazilian artists Bia Madeira and Larissa Ferreira working on a curatorial project bringing closer relations between Brazilian and African cultures on a multilayered dialogue across borders and languages. At the same time, the artist experiences her first awareness of the political battles by Indian Black indigeneous peoples and their struggles for land and heritage rights against governments. She is involved in a series of protests and spends time with individuals and their families which opens her heart to a wider consciousness of community, responsibility and discovery. It affirms the similarities for her about roots, family and heritage experienced in struggles in other countries like Gabon, South Africa and Senegal. In August 2012, she is caught in the cross-fires between ethnic clans in Johannesburg during the miners’ protests were 34 victims got shot by police authorities. In the previous year, she is working with the communities of the favelas of Santa Lucia in Belo Horizonte to develop a creative concept that would bridge the cultural gaps and dissolve tensions between class divisions and imaginary stereotypes of the notions of the other particular in Brazil. She builds 2 performances, the first in which she is arrested by local police for allegedly practising ‘African voodoo’ and the second where she creates a lake of fire built with paper boats by the community holding candles and dreams of the local participants. A third performance hosted by Scesc Palladium sees a collaborative piece with Brazilian artist Wagner Tempos Rossi, where she is washing white sheets in wine and whipping them dry across the floor before being tattooed with the slave trade boat going back to the direction of Africa.
After her performance Without Sanctuary in 2012, the Gabonese leaves a deep impression on many including international artist and teacher Merle Van Den Bosch who compares Bikoro’s works with the passion, fragility, strength and personal life tragedies of Frida Khalo. Fascinated by her expression and language, Merle embarks on a lasting friendship and collaboration with Bikoro to work together on a series of performance workshops across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe developing personal expression and talents of young students.
In the early 2000’s, Bikoro works with German artist collaborator and mentor Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smiths developing visual practices beyond materialities and approaches new interactions and expressions which she brings from earlier therapy methods during her 10 year leukaemia cancer treatment from the years preceding. She develops her unique style that breaks away from any conventional rule or theory and practice in Flux performance art history and narrates issues of current quotidian struggles across borders and continents working from Africa to Latin America. Involved in underground performance arts and alternative practices, Bikoro’s involvement with London’s newest underground scenes ArtEvict and Performance Space is caught with an interview session with radio Resonance FM London part of the ALISN EAO Conference in 2011. Bikoro’s performances are quickly noticed by 2010 with Last Independence (2009) and The Uncomfortable Truth (2010) and showcased in Basel’s international Art fairs curated by Christine Eyenne for Focus Contemporary both in 2010 and 2011. In 2011 she wins Best Awards for Best Performance Artist of the Year in Sweden (NSD Lulea 2011) and Best Performance of the Year in Finland nominated by renowned Finnish artist Willhem Willemus (Presentatioo 2011). She is then invited for the second time in Finland’s best Arts Academy TEAK in Helsinki for LAPsody 3rd International Conference & Festival for Live Art & Performance Studies that included the presentation of StasiDuck and a performance together with Zambian artist Baaba Chakeh Das on a collaborative piece titled Song Of Solomon. In Finland she meets UK artist Oreet Ashery and Finnish artist Roi Varaa. By 2010, she is collaborating with American artist Ron Athey on his installation series first released at Queen Mary’s University in London. By 2012, together with Nigerian artist Jelili Atiku, they foster a new creative and academic platform for Performance Visual Arts of Africa in and out of the continent, a meeting point for artists, curators and wider audiences.
Influenced by the literatures of writers and friends Nana Ofiriatta-Ayim, Boubacar Diop, Louis Camara and Achille Membe, she starts to break new conceptions of the notions of identity by introducing two terms explored in her philosophical writings; the crystal moment after apoptosis and the cannibal as regeneration.
Following the British Museum's public presentation "Benjamin, Benin & Britain: A Diamond Jubillee Celebration" in London with Leo Amesota and in conversation with Tate Britain's international Arts curator Paul Goodwin, Bikoro extends her literary contributions after her last published work with Geothe Institut entitled "Identity Nudity The Political Power of Contemporary Live Art Performance in Ato Malinda; The agorical spaces of performativity between the arts and political historycisation" published by Contact Zones NRB Kenya.
Continuing her etching and lithography works into 2013, she begins the launch of the Brick Moon after Elverett Hale’s short story released in 1892. Nations gather to create a brick moon that will be launched into the sky as a referral point to those lost at land and sea. Its light will be able to foster navigations for all people and find where and who they are. Before the moon is launched as a first satellite, it must retrieve walls of broken myths, broken tensions, xenophobias and prejudices to be changed then transformed into new material and a new beginning for emancipation and redemption. A work across four continents, a story about history past and present, cultural creolisations oscillating between tradition and modernity, we have passed the Renaissance, here comes the future generation.
Continuing her Doctorate Research Fellowship in Germany, Nathalie promises an access to visual cultures and academic contributions in the next seasons including the publication book series of Alice In Wonderland, Performance & Visual Cultures and the opening of her new Contemporary Art Gallery in Berlin that will comprise an array of diverse educational programmes, international conferences, alternative visual arts, artists´ residencies and local shop.