This document provides biographies of 10 contemporary African artists and 2 curators featured in an upcoming exhibition titled "No Such Place: Contemporary African Artists in America" at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art gallery in New York from February 26 to April 3, 2015. The artists work in a variety of mediums and their practices explore themes of cultural identity, belonging, migration, and representations of Africa. The curators Larry Ossei-Mensah and Dexter Wimberly have organized exhibitions that document cultural happenings and support emerging artists.

1. FINE ART
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NO SUCH PLACE
Contemporary African Artists in America
February 26, 2015 – April 3, 2015 Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 26th, 6 – 8pm
Artist and Curator Biographies
Exhibiting Artists:
ruby onyinyechi amanze
ruby onyinyechi amanze is a Brooklyn based artist of Nigerian ancestry and British upbringing. Her
drawings, rooted in magic realism, have been influenced by this cultural hybridity, and the politics of
belonging/non-belonging as an alien or an indigene. amanze graduated Summa Cum Laude from Tyler
School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. She then went on to pursue a M.F.A. at Cranbrook
Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
amanze has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including New York, Lagos and London. In
2012, she received a Fulbright Scholars Award to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to research and teach
contemporary drawing. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council Workspace Program in New York.
Modou Dieng
Modou Dieng is a multidisciplinary artist from Senegal working in mixed media, painting, photography,
and installation. Dieng’s interests lie in conceptualizing visions of contemporary life from a mix of
humanity, topography, and forms. Dieng evokes a city’s continuously changing facade, as well as its
hybrid character and eclectic combination. His work deals with urban history, race, social status, gender,
cosmopolitanism, and belonging.
He has exhibited with numerous galleries and museums including: Steve Turner Gallery (Los Angeles);
Pascal Polar Gallery (Brussels); Dakar Biennale (Dakar); Carousel du Louvre (Paris); Sarah Lawrence
College (NY); UMass (Boston); Museum of Contemporary African and Diaspora Art (Brooklyn); and Casa
Encendida (Madrid). He is the founder and curator of Worksound Gallery (Portland, OR).
Brendan Fernandes
Brendan Fernandes utilizes his personal and cultural dislocation as an Indian born in Kenya and raised in
Canada, as source material for his artistic practice. He seeks to answer "Who Am I?" by investigating the
constant fluctuation of identity via concepts of migration, codified language and movement from the
perspective of being a former dancer, queerness, and the cultural ideologies that shape how we view the
world and engage with each other.
He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and
earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from

2. York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Art and Design New York, Art in General,
the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, The National Gallery of Canada, The Studio Museum
in Harlem, Mass MoCA, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Art Gallery of York University, Deutsche
Guggenheim, He is a 2014 recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship.
Derek Fordjour
Derek Fordjour is an artist working in variety of media, primarily drawing, painting and printmaking. He
studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Student’s League in New York City. He is a graduate of Morehouse
College in Atlanta Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and is
currently pursuing an MFA in painting at Hunter College. His work is in several collections throughout
the US and Europe.
Sherin Guirguis
Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt in 1974 and now lives in Los Angeles, CA. Her work engages
both formal and social concerns by juxtaposing the reductive Western language of minimalist aesthetics
with that of Eastern ornamentation. The work attempts to problematize the history of decoration and
ornamentation and its relationship with social structures, cultural identity and Women’s agency.
She received her BA from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in
1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2001. Her work has
been exhibited at The Third Line Gallery, Dubai, UAE, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary
Art, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, LAXART, Los Angeles, and in the 2010 California
Biennial. Currently, Guirguis’ work is featured in The Avant Garde Collection exhibition at The
Orange County Museum of Art, CA.
Vivienne Koorland
Born in Cape Town in 1957, Vivienne Koorland studied at the University of Cape Town, the Universitat
der Kunste Berlin, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Paris, and Columbia University in New York, where she is
based. Growing up under Apartheid in South Africa informed Koorland’s practice: her large-scale hand-
hewn paintings of children’s drawings, maps, poems and songs explore constructions of history and
collective experience as mediated through images and text.
Exhibitions include the Jewish Museum, New York, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus Osnabrueck, Germany,
Williams College Museum of Art, Massachusetts, the Freud Museum, London, and the South African
National Gallery of Art, Cape Town, and she is represented in public and private collections all over the
world. In 2016 she will show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.
Nontsikelelo Mutiti
Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born artist and educator working across disciplines to
produce work that occupies the forms of fine art, design, and social practice. Mutiti received a diploma in
multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Digital Arts in 2007 and an MFA with a
concentration in graphic design from the Yale School of Art in 2012. Her recent exhibitions
include T(H)READ, a solo installation at the Edwin Gallery in Hamtramck, Mich., curated by Chido
Johnson; “Aural Map Making (125th Street)“ inRemitting Default: Sonic Diagrams for Recess
Activities in New York City, curated by Kenya (Robinson); a performative lecture, “A New Work/A
Now Work/A Non Work,” at Yale’s Davenport College Art Gallery; and Give and Take: A Currency of
Culture, at the Community Folk Art Centre at Syracuse University. She is co-founder of the

3. Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit, and co-curated Kumusha, an exhibition highlighting
collaborative works by artists in Zimbabwe and Detroit with sister shows in Harare, Zimbabwe
and Hamtramck, Michigan. Mutiti is currently Assistant Professor in New Media at Purchase College
where she teaches design and video.
Wura-Natasha Ogunji
A performance and visual artist who works in a variety of mediums, Wura-Natasha Ogunji is best known
for her videos, in which she uses her own body to explore movement and mark-making across water,
land and air. Her current performance series entitled 'Mo gbo mo branch/I heard and I branched myself
into the party’ explores the presence of women in public space in Lagos, Nigeria. Ogunji has received a
number of awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2012) and
grants from the Idea Fund, Houston (2010), and the Pollock- Krasner Foundation (2005). She has
performed at Centre for Contemporary Art (Lagos), The Menil Collection (Houston) and the Pulitzer
Foundation for the Arts (St. Louis). Ogunji received a BA in Anthropology from Stanford University, Palo
Alto, CA, in 1992 and a MFA in Photography from San Jose State University, CA, in 1998. She lives in
Austin and Lagos.
Adejoke Tugbiyele
Adejoke Tugbiyele is a Nigerian-American sculptor and experimental video artist. Tugbiyele works with a
diverse range of materials including wire, natural fibres, fabric and wood. Her work responds to spiritual
aspects of Yoruba culture, a cultural group occupying the South West region of Nigeria. It also deals with
political subjects related to sexual identity, women's rights and human rights. She has been exhibited and
screened at renowned institutions internationally including the Centre for Contemporary Art, and the
Goethe Institute, both Lagos, Nigeria; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland; The Museum of
Arts and Design and the United Nations Headquarters, New York, USA.
After studying and practicing as an architect, Tugbiyele went on to receive a MFA in Sculpture from the
Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. She is the recipient of several awards including the Fulbright
US Student Fellowship in 2013-14 and the Amalie Rothschild Award in 2013. Tugbiyele also serves as
the Director of Studio Arts Programs at the Lower East Side Girls Club of New York where she offers
mentoring support for young women in the arts.
The Curators
Larry Ossei-Mensah
Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American independent curator and writer who has documented
cultural happenings for various publications such as Uptown and Whitewall Magazine. His writings
include profiles of Swizz Beatz, Mickalene Thomas, Lorna Simpson and street artist JR. As a curator,
Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around
us. Ossei-Mensah currently serves on Russell Simmons' RUSH Artist Advisory Board and the acquisitions
committee for the Young Collectors Council at the Guggenheim Museum.
Dexter Wimberly
Independent curator Dexter Wimberly was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. A passionate collector
and supporter of the arts, he has exhibited the work of hundreds of artists in the U.S. and abroad.
Wimberly maintains a critical dialogue with emerging artists throughout the world by way of his
exhibitions, public programs, and lectures at galleries and public arts institutions. He has organized
exhibitions and programs for Mixed Greens Gallery; Driscoll Babcock Galleries; 101 Exhibit; Edward

4. Tyler Nahem Fine Art; bitforms gallery; Koki Arts, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary African
Diasporan Arts (MoCADA); and The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; among others. Wimberly
is the Director of Strategic Planning at Independent Curators International in New York.
Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art is located at 37 West 57th Street, New York. Established in 1985 as a
gallery specializing in American and European Modern, Post--‐ War, and Contemporary art, the gallery
has built an international reputation for exhibiting important paintings, sculpture, and works on paper
over the past three decades.
For more information on the exhibition and Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, please visit
www.EdwardTylerNahemFineArt.com http://nosuchplaceexhibition.tumblr.com ###
Media Inquiries: J. A. Forde, Company Agenda, 212.358.9516, ja@companyagenda.com