Born in 1970, Saint Louis, United States.
Lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.
Wura-Natasha Ogunji was born in 1970 in Saint Louis, United States, to an American mother and a Nigerian father. Her practice is multi-disciplinary, first as a photographer and then as a video artist, she now focuses on performance and paper technique. Consisting of hand-sewn figures as well as ink and graphite on tracing paper, her drawings are intrinsically linked to movement. Ogunji is fascinated by gesture and often makes her body a subject of study. Her connection to it, her curiosity about its physicality and limitations, is a key element in all her work. “My goal is to transpose who I am as a human, to mark the space, and I do so with deep honesty and integrity.“
Her performances highlight power and social presence, and more universally how women stand out through their ordinary or heroic actions. She continually manipulates and experiments with her material, incising and sewing through the paper, playing with its transparency so that her works become physically and conceptually layered. «I try to explore the outer limits of my imagination in a way that is connected to other people’s imaginations and other experiences of being human in the world.»
Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s work has been exhibited in major cultural institutions. Recent exhibitions include A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, 2023-24; rīvus, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, 2022; The Power of My Hands, Africa(s): Women Artists, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 2021 and Alpha Crucis: Contemporary African Art, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, 2020. She served as artist-curator for the 33rd São Paulo Biennale, where her large-scale performance Days of Being Free was first presented.