Nnenna Okore

Nnenna Okore was born in Australia in 1975 to parents from Ututu, Nigeria. At age four, she moved back to Nigeria with her parents who began working at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Okore graduated from Primary and Secondary School in Nigeria before moving to Swaziland where her father took on a position for the United Nations and where Okore attended Waterford Kamhlaba United World College.

In 1994, Nnenna Okore won first prize at the UNIFEM Women's Art Contest and got to travel to Dakar, Abuja and Beijing. She enrolled in the Fine and Applied Arts undergraduate program at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka in 1995 and graduated as Valedictorian of her class in 1999. In 2002, she began her graduate studies in Fine Arts at the University of Iowa, obtaining her Master of Arts degree in Sculpture in 2004 and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture in 2005.

Upon graduation, Okore became an Assistant Professor at North Park University in Chicago. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011 and full time Professor and Chair of the Fine Art Department at North Park University in 2015. In 2023, Okore received her Ph.D. in Fine Art from Monash University.

Alongside her academic work, Okore was able to secure several artist-in-residency fellowships, for example at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2004; at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007; and at Skidmore College in 2011.

She has also received several fellowships and awards such as the UNESCO-Aschberg Fellowship for Artists awarded by the Gruber Jez Foundation in Mérida, Mexico in 2006; a fellowship at the Global Art Village in Delhi, India in 2007; a fellowship at the Jean Paul Blachère Foundation in Apt, France in 2010; and a Fulbright Scholar Award to the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 2012.

Okore lives and works both in the United States and Nigeria and has exhibited in more than 100 exhibitions world-wide over the past two decades. Her works are part of several notable collections, such as the World Bank's Art Collection, the Newark Museum, the Jean Paul Blachère Foundation, the Indianapolis Art Center and the Royal Collections in Abu Dhabi.