Kosisochukwu Nnebe (b. 1993, Nigeria) is a neurodivergent Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist and researcher working across installation, lens- and time-based media, textiles and sculpture. Through a research-based and pedagogical practice, she rethinks historical narratives by centring the agency and emotional worlds of Black women and offers transgressive representations and understandings of Blackness rooted in anti-imperial relationality.
A self-taught artist, Nnebe’s work critically unpacks her academic background in economics, development and sociology from McGill University and the London School of Economics, as well as her professional experience in social, economic, and environmental policy within the Canadian government.
Inspired by her work in food and biodiversity policy, Nnebe develops a methodology for transforming foodways into counter-archives of colonial histories, tracing the migration and changing uses of crops such as cassava to recover histories of gendered resistance. Her approach to image-making incorporates ecological methods that position nature as active collaborator and medium for the materialization of archival photographs.
Beyond representation –and grounded in her work in social and economic policy – Nnebe’s practice seeks impact: fostering spaces for coalition-building between differently colonized peoples and using existing channels for the circulation of capital – both within and beyond the arts – to redistribute resources as a means of restitution and reparations.
Nnebe is a 2025 alumnus of the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands; a 2023 Awardee of the G.A.S. Fellowship started by Yinka Shonibare CBE RA in Lagos, Nigeria; and was nominated for and selected as a 2024 Artist-in-Residence with Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) at El Espacio 23, a contemporary art space founded by Jorge M. Perez in Miami.
Her work has been shown in exhibitions internationally, including the Hanoi Photo Festival (Vietnam), Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane (French Guiana), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), UNFAIR Amsterdam, the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), the Tolhuistuin Centre (Amsterdam), NADA New York, the Bowling Green State University Gallery (Bowling Green, Ohio), Green Space (Miami), Hausen Gallery (New York City), the Mohr Gallery at Stanford University (Stanford, California), the Art Museum of Toronto, Art Toronto, Critical Distance Centre for Curators (Toronto), the NIA Centre (Toronto), the Doris McCarthy Gallery (Toronto), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Galerie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal et a l’Outaouais (Montreal and Hull), Optica Gallery (Montreal), Centre Clark (Montreal), articule (Montreal), Plural (Montreal), the Warren G. Flowers Gallery (Montreal), the Ottawa Art Gallery, the School for Photographic Arts (Ottawa), AXENEO7 (Hull), the Foreman Gallery at the University of Sherbrooke, Gallery Gachet (Vancouver), Artspeak (Vancouver), Richmond Gallery (Richmond, BC), Plug in ICA (Winnipeg), The Bows (Calgary), the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Robert McGlaughlin Gallery (Oshawa) and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston).
Nnebe has been commissioned for public art by Plug In ICA and digital art by the Mozilla Foundation, and is the recipient of numerous grants at the national and provincial levels. Institutional acquisitions include Kadist (Paris), the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Montreal Roundtable for Black History Month, in addition to private collections in Canada, the United States and Nigeria.
Her work has been featured in arts and media publications internationally including: The Guardian (UK), Metropolis Magazine (Netherlands), Contemporary And and Contemporary And Latin America (Germany/Kenya), Sugarcane Magazine (US), Arts.Black (US), CBC (Canada), Canadian Art Magazine (Canada), C Magazine (Canada), the Power Plant’s In/Tension Podcast (Canada), Akimbo (Canada), Esse (Canada), Vie des Arts (Canada), the Agnes Etherington’s With Opened Mouths Podcast (Canada), Studio Magazine (Canada), Herizons Magazine (Canada), Femme Art Review (Canada), Peripheral Review (Canada), Newest Magazine (Canada), and Range Magazine (Canada).
Nnebe is regularly invited to give presentations about her artistic research at universities and art centres across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Her writing has been commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada, the Department of Love: Love Letters, Disembodied Territories (UK) and Artexte (Montreal). Two of her essays about her practice and research are set to be included in forthcoming book publications. In 2021, Nnebe designed and taught a course on Art and Criticism from a critical and decolonial perspective for the Ottawa School of Art’s Fine Arts Diploma Program.
Nnebe is based between Maastricht, Netherlands; Lagos, Nigeria; and, Ottawa, Canada.
An up-to-date artist CV can be found here.