Kosisochukwu Nnebe (b. 1993, Nigeria) is a neurodivergent Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist and researcher working across installation, lens- and time-based media, and sculpture. Her work challenges dominant narratives by transforming the vernacular and commonplace—from native languages and foodstuffs such as cassava to physical spaces such as nail salons—into counter-archives of colonial histories. Through her practice, she excavates and reclaims gendered histories of resistance, offering transgressive representations and understandings of Blackness rooted in anti-imperial relationality. At its core, Nnebe's practice is invested in anti-imperial worldbuilding through the troubling of colonial logics and speculative reimaginings of otherwise pasts, presents, and futures.
A self-taught artist, Nnebe uses her practice to critically engage with her educational 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 with the Canadian government.
Nnebe’s work has been shown in exhibitions internationally, including UNFAIR Amsterdam, NADA New York, the Bowling Green State University Gallery (Bowling Green, Ohio), Green Space (Miami), the Tolhuistuin Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Mohr Gallery at Stanford University (Stanford, California), Hausen Gallery (New York City), the Art Museum of Toronto, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Critical Distance Centre for Curators (Toronto), the NIA Centre (Toronto), the Doris McCarthy Gallery (Toronto), the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Galerie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal et a l’Outaouais (Montreal and Hull), Optica Gallery (Montreal), Centre Clark (Montreal), articule (Montreal), Papier/Plural (Montreal), the Warren G. Flowers Gallery (Montreal), the Foreman Gallery at the University of Sherbrooke, AXENEO7 (Hull), Artspeak (Vancouver), Richmond Gallery (Richmond, BC), Plug in ICA (Winnipeg), the School for Photographic Arts (Ottawa), The Bows (Calgary), the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Robert McGlaughlin Gallery (Oshawa) and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston).
She has been commissioned for public art by Plug In ICA and digital art by the Mozilla Foundation. Her work has been acquired by public institutions such as the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Montreal Roundtable for Black History Month, in addition to private collections in Canada, the United States and Nigeria. She is the recipient of grants at the national (Canada Council for the Arts) and provincial (Ontario Arts Council) levels.
Nnebe is a 2025 participant of a year-long residency at 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.
She has been invited to give presentations about her artistic research at art centres and universities across Canada as well as in 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’s work has been featured in arts and media publications internationally including: The Guardian (UK), 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 based between Maastricht, Netherlands, Lagos, Nigeria, and Ottawa, Canada.
An up-to-date artist CV can be found here.