Nanci Amaka

Artist Portrait by Brandyn Liu 

Nanci Amaka is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and writer whose work explores trauma, memory, and the liminal space between experience and language. Drawing from her formative years in southeastern Nigeria and her migration to the United States in 1993, Amaka’s practice is rooted in personal history, ancestral knowledge, and the psychological impact of displacement.

Her work spans photography, performance, installation, and text, often weaving together poetic narratives that examine vulnerability, social empathy, and the body as a site of memory. Influenced by West African animism and ecological thinking, Amaka engages landscapes as portals for healing and transcendence—particularly in her recent work created in Hawai‘i, where she now lives and works.

Amaka holds a BA in Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is recognized for her ability to create emotionally resonant, conceptually rigorous work that challenges dominant narratives and invites reflection on identity, autonomy, and care.

Whether communing with ancestral terrain or amplifying the voices of the unseen, Amaka’s practice is a call to witness and remember. Her work offers a space for reckoning and renewal—insisting that art can be both a vessel for truth and a tool for transformation. - (Natasha Becker 2025)

Artist Portrait by Rob Lau

Hugh Leeman: Your artwork is deeply personal with emotive social commentary; there are performance and video aspects. When did you begin to see art as a potential path to explore in your life?

Nanci Amaka: I've always made drawings and little mud forms. I've always been a creative person. Growing up, I knew some people who were artists who made sculptures or altars. But it wasn't until I moved to the States when I was about 11 that I started seeing it could be a profession. We moved to Chicago, and I would take the train up to the Art Institute of Chicago. That's when I really started feeling like there's actually an identity here—this could be who I am. It was more recognizing this is who I am.

HL: You grew up in a rainforest village in southeast Nigeria, then moved to sub-Saharan northern Nigeria before coming to the United States. You've compared the climate and mood of Hawaii, where you currently live, to Nigeria. Beyond this comparison, what were your early perceptions of the United States, and how have they changed over time?

NA: When we moved to Chicago—after leaving the village and living in different places in northern Nigeria—I still felt very connected to nature. We never lived in big cities like Lagos. The first time I was really in Lagos was on our way to O'Hare airport. I just remember feeling disconnected from nature.

Winter is really interesting because everything dies, and then there's a rebirth in spring, but it feels like it never really takes. My first impression of the United States was being cut off from nature. There's this cultural emphasis on humans as creatures that don't have to be connected to nature. You don't grow your own food. You don't really know who grows your food. There's no thought of it. It's just moving from one sterile area to another.

The US was so pristine—everything was cleaned up to the max. I couldn't quite pinpoint what I was feeling until we went back to Nigeria in 1998. Going to Nigeria and feeling alive again, then coming back—I remember we landed in O'Hare and they were repainting pillars that weren't cracked or falling apart, just dirty. That's when I really recognized the difference: there's a hard veneer in the US. Decay is not even allowed to show its face.

Now I live in Hawaii and there's a different feeling. One of my favorite towns is Hilo. Part of why I love Hilo is there's so much moss everywhere. Even in Honolulu, people powerwash the moss off rocks and stairs. In Hilo, they just let it grow. That's so comforting to me. I feel safer with moss in the corners than with very clean everything, all white edges, all 90-degree angles.

Cleanse Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Floor – Installation View – Catharine Clark Gallery 2025 

Details: Six – Channel Performance Documentation Video

Runtimes: 04:29, 09:58, 14:55

HL: I want to read a quote from something you've written about your artwork "Cleanse," which was set in motion at the beginning of your pregnancy: "As I cleaned, I thought of my mother, begged her forgiveness for forgetting her, and prayed to negate intergenerational trauma for my future child. I consciously embodied physical calm while evoking and engaging with traumatic memories and simultaneously telling my child we were both safe. Psychologically time traveling between the painful past and hopeful future while physically engaged in a present act of nurture on a doomed structure. In the process, my body became drenched in sweat. It felt as if cleansing itself from the inside out." Can you talk about this idea of nurturing on a doomed structure, and what have the interactions been like with your daughter around this project?

NA: These questions are really impressive. Thank you. I'm starting to sweat now. Let me make sure I remember everything because I'm getting emotional.

Growing up with such a sense of loss very early on, then leaving my village and moving to other parts of Nigeria, migrating to the US—I've had to build a stronger relationship with loss over time. I came to a point where I recognized that my family ran so much from my mom's existence, even her death. I didn't want to run anymore.

I grew up with grief and she's always been with me. My grief is sort of like my twin. She's always been with me and I didn't want to fight with her anymore. The twin of life is death. It's inevitable. We all know it's coming. But there's such a fear of her. Recognizing her and accepting her can sometimes feel like—what's the point of life?

Life itself is a doomed structure in some ways. We're building all these things and we spend so much energy on it. Everything we're building—all of our craft—ends up not with us in the end. Futility is inevitable. It's all just going to go away.

I was thinking a lot about that when I was cleaning. That was part of the genesis of the work itself—constantly thinking about the end. I came to a point where I just don't want to fight it anymore. I don't want to fight knowing that everything ends. I don't want to fight being afraid. I just want to be okay being afraid, okay knowing that we're all going to go.

While I was cleaning, I wanted to come to peace with it again and again. It's something we all have to keep doing over and over. It still terrifies me. "Cleanse" was the beginning of me saying this is where I stop running away and start accepting it because I'm going to have a child. I'm starting a life and I chose this. I really wanted it. I wanted my own family for as long as I can remember.

There has to be a core within me, a rooted seed that is more focused on life than death—more future-focused than focused on the past—that has come to a place of peace so I can turn my attention more towards this coming child, this new life, the future.

Cleanse Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Three Walls – Installation View – Hawaii Triennial 2025 

Details: Three – Channel Performance Documentation Video

Runtime: 19:29 

It's been really beautiful this past year. After I made "Cleanse," I really put it away. There are still some parts I'm yet to perform—I'm waiting for the right moment. This past year has been incredible because it started with it being shown at the trienal in February and so leading up to it, I was preparing myself. In February, I was kind of dodging speaking about it. My daughter wasn't at any of the artist talks I gave.

Then I had a residency in the spring. She came with me and I knew I had to speak to her about what the project was really about. She knew my mom had passed, but didn't know my mom had passed violently. We had a walk alongside a stream and I explained it all to her. That was in March, right before her seventh birthday.

Since then I've shown it at Katie's gallery three times and I've had all these talks about it. She's been part of it in some ways, so she's really gotten to understand the work fully. I've been faced with watching something I wish someone had done for me when I was younger: speak about my mom, frankly and with care.

Threshold (2025)

Title: Untitled 

Medium: Performance Video Still

HL: You've said, "I'm most interested in the poetry of consciously going through time with another person." I love the potential in this. Tell me what that means to you and how it translates through the language of your art.

NA: I found out I absolutely loved performance art in undergrad, but in grad school I stepped into it and there's nothing like it. With the kind of performance work I do, I'm very interested in what happens when you're in proximity to somebody else—the invisible communication you can have together, especially doing something together. Saying we're going to move from one spot to the next together and being mindful, present through it together. How you change from that one spot to the next.

A lot of that comes from growing up in an indigenous space. For a long time after we left my village, I would get called a bush girl because I grew up in the village. I really appreciate that now as I've developed my practice because when I think of home, I think of the village. That's the beginning. That's my childhood home even though I've lived in all these places since.

Ritual was so important. We went to Catholic church, but I always felt that going through any rituals together, any ceremonies together as a group—especially in women's spaces—I felt very connected to my community. We had meetings constantly. Almost every week there was a meeting where everybody or a bigger group came together. Being together and going through the meetings, the gatherings really bound us together.

I think that's true. That's why things like family dinners are so important just being together. That's why dates are important—spending time together. You really get wound together and you're different at the end of it in ways we can't necessarily perceive or calculate. I don't think we have the tools to measure it, but there's definitely a change at the end.

Ije | Ézè Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Nzuko 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

Dimensions: 33in x 44in | 84cm x 112cm 

HL: You're a writer beyond your performance art. In a previous interview, you mentioned reading "Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals" by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In it, she asks the reader, "What evolutionary repetitions have you cultivated to move through oceans? What are the ones you need to cultivate for the waves moving you now?" What are your responses to the author's questions?

NA: Oh, I love that. Honestly, I think going back and forth at the same time, almost like a spiral. For me, it's pulling from my roots to know what I need to project forward. These days I think of myself like a tree. It helps me feel—because I deal with this deep loneliness feeling. I think it's from being separated from my mother, leaving my village, coming to the US. A lot of people have that feeling because we're moving through this world. We've come from somewhere but we are going somewhere else, and there's always this sense of disconnect.

Ije | Ézè Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Obi Ohia 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

Dimensions: 16in x 21in | 41cm x 53cm

These days I feel very much like a tree and I feel very connected to those that came before me. I talked a lot this year about finding out that when women are pregnant, they're forming their eggs while they're in utero with their mother. That was such a powerful thing for me. When I got pregnant, it helped me recognize that my mother was a profound part of my child. Whatever she was eating was what nurtured me as I made my eggs, as I created my future. I did all of that packaging inside her while housed in her.

The eggs of me were made in my grandmother, in her mother. I'm not just some random seed floating around. I'm actually a tree. I'm connected in all these different ways. My ancestors helped craft my future.

The thing I try now to do constantly in my practice is I look in the past as a way to project the future, but I don't just look in the past and stay there. I'm not recreating what's been done. I'm looking at it and putting my body through it or writing about it as a way to understand what's next.

I love that quote. Could you please send it to me? I want to put it on a post-it note and put it up.

HL: Yes, absolutely.

Ije | Ézè Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Standing Water 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

Dimensions: 45in x 36in | 144cm x 91cm

HL: To connect what you just shared—the idea of being the tree connected to this ancestral past and how that comes into your daughter's life—I want to discuss "Ije | Ézè" the artwork in which you explore the experience of losing your mother to violence as a child and the psychological implications of a life lived in mourning. This is incredibly courageous of you to bring something so deeply personal into the public realm through your art. Can you talk about your inner dialogue in doing that? What did that sound like in your head?

NA: Yeah. It's terrifying. Even now it is. There's this feeling of absolute vulnerability—it could be exploited. I recognize that human beings can be very cruel and dark and manipulative and violent. I've experienced quite a bit of it early on.

But again, the choice is to accept it and to not be so terrified of it that I'm ruled by it. I don't even feel brave honestly. I just feel like I have to do it so I can breathe, so I can survive.

Telling my story, there's always this fear that people are just going to look at it and scoff. But after years of actually just saying this is me, this is what happened to me, this is how I process the world, I don't think I'm that afraid anymore.

What I've actually learned is that a lot of people have gone through similar things or worse things. A lot of people are going through really awful things right now. I actually have an optimistic story in many ways because of where I am right now. Not to say I'll always be here, but I actually feel more connected to people.

What I found is that folks will look at the work quietly and say, "Oh, it's really great," and then double back without their group and pull me aside and have an intimate conversation about what they've been through themselves. Or they'll send me a message about how they felt seen.

I think it's a bit tragic that in our communities, we ignore such a huge part of our lives. We ignore death, which is a massive part of who we are. We ignore trauma. We don't want to talk about the ugly things and we put up such a mask that sometimes we stop recognizing who we actually are—the things that connect us—and we lose sight of the value of those things and why we need to communicate them.

Ije | Ézè Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Otu Abuo Ato 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

Dimensions: 44in x 33in | 112cm x 84cm 

HL: Maybe to pull "Ije | Ézè" into this—after the birth of your own daughter, you incorporated her into the meditations, evolving the performance from ruminations on a past filled with trauma to a more active acceptance of the present moment. How have the conversations been with your daughter on this project, and what have her questions been?

NA: This may be controversial, but it's a combination. I don't know which came first, but she's a very deep thinker and has been from a very young age. She started asking about death and mourning very young. We would just have those conversations. Everything passes. We're all—nothing is permanent. Everything ends. That includes us.

She's known about my mother because I've always wanted to be able to talk about my mother. I couldn't as a child talk about her. I have her photos about. My daughter also has her father's mother, her family, so she'll ask me about my family. I don't want to lie to her, so I'll explain a little bit of things.

I actually think she's quite well-rounded. The conversations we've been having recently haven't really been that different from the conversations we've had since she was a baby. If she has any questions about my mom, she'll just ask them. Sometimes she'll say, "I wish I had both my grandmothers," and we'll talk about it.

There are times when I'm doing a lot of work, and because my work is so personal, I get very emotional. I need to have a day where I either mourn my mom or mourn the life I used to have or just whatever. I will express that and my husband's so supportive. We'll have days where it's like, okay, mommy needs to go on a hike or something. She understands and knows I'm mourning my mom today.

But I will also invite her. Would you like to come with me to go pray in the woods? So we'll go together sometimes. We'll go on a walk or a hike and collect flowers or rocks or sticks—things that feel beautiful or feel like part of nature—and we'll build an altar somewhere in the woods. We'll find a spot and collect things along the way and build something and just sit and meditate for a bit.

It's been so normal for her that nothing's really changed so much recently.

Mimic Series (2016)

Title: Ejije & Ihe Di Ka 

Medium: Gold-Plated Human Tooth Sewn into Vintage Silk Kimono Lining, Repurposed ‘Family Uniform’ Nigerian Wax Print Cotton, Hand-Knit Polyester Scarf, Wool Yarn, Poly-fiber Filling

HL: I want to change gears to another artwork, “Ihe Di Ka” & “Ejije” You used the first scarf you ever knit yourself and pieces of cloth from a family portrait where your whole family had clothes made from the same fabric. There's also teeth from another deceased family member that address what is lost when a loved one dies and what's left behind. Can you talk about this artwork and what has it meant to you to share pieces of your past and family members?

NA: I made that piece thinking about loss and mourning and what we hold on to. I made it soon after we moved to Hawaii.

My husband and I have been together for a very long time—we were friends before that. He was always very clear that he wanted to move back home because he's born and raised here. I'd visited Hawaii and it feels a lot like the village to me, like home. So it felt okay to move here. We kind of knew this was our endpoint. We both had a lot of schooling, I moved around a lot, and then in 2015 we finally landed here. He began working and I set up a studio thinking this would be my last studio—it felt like a homecoming in some ways.

I had a lot of different pieces of things I had held on to. The teeth were given to me. Nobody knew—she had gotten really sick, she was on her deathbed—that she had held on to the teeth for so long. Her husband had passed a decade before that. This was my husband's grandmother who I got very close to. She was this old Japanese lady, but she had lost her mother when she was really young too.

Ije | Ézè Series (2017 – Ongoing)

Title: Pillar Between Life and Death 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

Dimensions: 44in x 33in | 112cm x 84cm 

Because I've been so frank about my life, she would talk to me about things she never really spoke about with the rest of the family. We would talk about our mothers, what we remembered. We did a lot of crafting together. Whenever I'd come to Hawaii, I would spend most of the day with her. We'd go hiking in the mornings and I'd come back and spend the rest of the day with her. We'd quilt together. She loved to knit too. We'd always be knitting or crocheting—a lot of craft work.

We'd spend time together, be quiet for a long time, and then start talking and talk and talk. But it was always about our mothers. She lost her mom to the Spanish flu when she was really little.

When she was passing away—her husband had passed 10 years before—she gave me his teeth. In the Japanese tradition, you get cremated and they pull the gold teeth. She had them in this little pouch and handed it to me and asked if I would make something with it.

She had also given me some of her kimonos—she was a Japanese dancer. I took some of the lining from her kimonos and made a pouch that I put the teeth in.

In the sculpture itself, there are a lot of different pieces from my life. The scarf I carried forever with me. I started knitting for the first time while I was in Nigeria—I was at a boarding school, all girls, trying to knit this thing. It was just a small piece. Then I came to the US and I was still adding to it.

There are all these little pieces of things I had in a box that I moved and moved and moved with. It felt like all those things belong together in that work. It really is about the things we hold on to and trying to understand why. I don't think I know exactly why we hold on to these things.

HL: I want to ask about a previous work that may not get shared with the audience from an emotional perspective. Regarding the project "Anarcha", the slave woman whose body the speculum was discovered on—you wrote, "As there are no records of her point of view, I chose to explore her experience by simulating it. I invited 30 women to participate in this with me as we all benefit from her sacrifice." This is a phenomenal act of empathy. From an emotional standpoint, what was this process like for you?

NA: That piece was the beginning of me falling in love with performance art. It was absolutely terrifying—not just for me, but also for my husband, boyfriend at the time, all of my friends. It was so scary to do something like that. Yet I felt like I had to do it.

In undergrad at The Art Institute of Chicago, one of my advisers was this phenomenal woman writer, Terry Kapsalis. She had done a similar project. That's how I found out about Anarcha—in her book. Then I did a deep dive. I got the diary of J. Marion Sims, the doctor, and read through it. I felt like I still couldn't get close enough to her. At that point, the internet wasn't what it is now. There was nothing on her. It was so hard to find out anything about her.

But powered by Terry's book and J. Marion Sims's diary, I was scrounging to find anything about Anarcha. Then there was a moment where I remembered that even my people, the Igbos who are alive right now—this was 2008 to 2010 when I was in grad school at CCA. I couldn't find a lot about my people and the indigenous ways we were living. Even now it's hard to find.

It was a moment of recognizing that information doesn't just exist in books. If it's not published, it's not real—I think that's how I was thinking because of academics and boarding school in the US, a math and science academy. There's this mathematical way of thinking about things and evidence.

Anarcha Series (2010)

Title: Anarcha

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

But in that moment, I realized there's a lot to learn and understand by putting yourself through it. Our actual bodies have so much knowledge in them. You can talk about walking through Golden Gate Park, but it was different to walk with my daughter through Golden Gate Park. There are elements of things you don't remember or don't come up if you're just reading something. But when you put your body through it, you really learn so much.

The fact that this woman was on her back outside—I mean, when I did the performance I was inside—but just laying on your back and having somebody coming and experimenting on you, what was that? What did that feel like?

I was also curious as somebody who benefited from the technology built from it. I was curious about what it felt like to actually do that on a human being as a way to discover something else. That was part of asking 30 of my colleagues and friends to come and do the cut.

A lot of us had conversations. That was the beginning of me having conversations over and over with these women—look what I found out, it's really interesting, we all have had the speculum used on us at our annual appointments. Would you come and help me understand what this must have been like for this person?

She became so much realer immediately. We're all having these conversations. I have a lot of queer colleagues, so a lot of them were having conversations about what if she was a queer body? Something I had never even thought of. What did that feel like? What are the psychological implications of that? What was happening in her mind?

It's been 15 years since that performance. A lot of the women have since had children. One of them came to visit recently with her son. She texted me after she had her son and said, "While I was in labor, I remembered Anarcha. And I was telling my nurse about it."

Things like that happen. Years later, we're thinking about it. People forward me things because now she's more famous—not famous, but a lot more people know of Anarcha. People send me things all the time when they see something on social media about it.

I think it's these connections we're talking about—winding ourselves together by going through a ritual together. Even today that performance haunts me because it was so scary to first initiate it. It was scary to be there and be that vulnerable. It was scary to allow people to watch me be that vulnerable.

There are times when my daughter was first applying to schools here where I was like, should I take that off my website? Are people going to look at that and find it perverse? What are they going to think about me? There were certain images of the performance I've taken out because they felt too raw. I have a video of the performance and even that I had to debate if I should put up.

But I know I learned so much from that performance. It changed me and I think it's still impactful today with the women who I did it with. We still talk about it. I feel like I learned a bit about Anarcha, about who she was and what she went through, but I know I learned more about me from doing it.

Corpse & Mirror Series (2013 – Ongoing)

Title: 06082019 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

HL: The final question is hypothetical and references your artwork "Corpse & Mirror." You confront the fear of death through this photography project in which you speak of the fear of death as eliciting anxiety. If you were able to convince people to take action on confronting their fear of death, what would you have them do?

NA: I would have them do "Corpse & Mirror."

I've had a lot of different moments of having to overcome some sort of fear. There's a project I don't think I've published anywhere called the Santa Monica Wildflower Project. This was in 2014. I had moved to Santa Monica from Boston. Unfortunately, in 2013 in Boston, I had been around during the marathon bombing. I developed this fear of going outside.

The Santa Monica Wild Flower Project (2014 - 2015)

Title: 05142015 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo

The way I processed that was to say, "Okay, I'm doing a project. It's art. It's performance. I'm going to go outside. I'm going to find flowers that I like from my neighbors. I'm going to steal their flowers, and every time I get home, I would have a little bouquet." I got these teeny mini vases. I would take a photo of it. That would be the performance. And it really worked.

Scar Story Series (2010 – Ongoing)

Title: Santa Cruz Scars (2016) 

Medium: Performance Documentation Photo - Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

Performance art especially allows you to explore parts of yourself. Even though I've talked about a lot of fear that comes with what's the audience going to think or how are they going to react, the art space is the freest there is socially.

I would really say that if anyone is struggling with their fear of death, look at dead things. Maybe start with something that isn't so terrifying. Maybe just leaves. Look at the decay of leaves. Look at stains on your walls. Look at footprints. Look at scars. Look at wrinkles. Insects—there are dead insects everywhere. When you see a dead insect, just spend a second and be present with the fact that something has ended.

That's basically what that project is. It's looking at death over and over again as a way to normalize it maybe. So you don't have to accept the whole thing now that you are going to die and everyone you love is going to die, but you can start by just looking at fall leaves. Accepting winter's coming. Just being like, okay, it's happening. Maybe it's a little more manageable that way.

HL: Nanci, thank you so much for sharing the way you do, for your creativity, and for taking time to share these stories with me today.

NA: Thank you so much, Hugh.