Fatimah Tuggar
Encyclopedia
Fatimah Tuggar is a Nigeria
n visual artist.
and now based in New York City
, Fatimah Tuggar completed her MFA at Yale University
in 1996. Since she has shown her work in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA
), the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and international biennial exhibitions such as the Moscow
Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005), Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
(2003), Centre Georges Pompidou
(2005), Paris
and the Bamako
Biennal, Mali
, 2003.
She has received numerous grants from distinguished institutions such as The Rema Mann Hort Foundation of New York
, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and The Wheeler Foundation, Brooklyn
.
Tuggar's body of work includes objects, images, video and interactive media installations. Collage and assemblage seem to figure into all of her creations with a focus often on Western
and some West African Cultures.
The objects usually involve some kind of bricolage
; combining two or more objects from Western Africa and their Western equivalent to talk about electricity, infrastructure, access and the reciprocal influences between technology and cultures.
Similarly, her computer montages and video collage works bring together both video and photographs she shoots herself and found materials from commercials, magazines and archival footage. Meaning for Tuggar seems lie in these juxtapositions which explore how media affects our daily lives.
Overall Tuggar’s work using strategies of deconstruction
to challenge our perceptions and attachments to accustomed ways of looking. The body of work conflates ideas about race, gender
and class
; disturbing our notions of subjectivity
.
daily life. Her art turns the attention to the process and labor involved in constructing visual knowledge about gendered subjectivity, belonging, and notions of progress.
Tuggar’s media art relies heavily on computer
-based technologies and image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and AfterEffects. Her process uses the medium to comment on the medium itself; thus, she employs technology
as form and content to express and analyze its significance in the creation of current economic, cultural, and geographic systems.
Her works comment on potentially sensitive themes such as ethnicity, technology and post-colonial culture, although the artist chooses not to extend a didactic message, but rather to elucidate cultural nuances that go beyond obvious cross-cultural comparison.
For example in this 1996 sculpture
entailed Turntable, Tuggar uses raffia discs to replace the
vinyl record. The artwork speaks of the influence on language the introduction of the gramophone brought. Because of the physical similarly between the vinyl and fai-fai in many Northern Nigerian languages vinyl record get its name from raffia disc. For instance in Hausa
the raffia disc is called fai-fai and vinyl is fai-fain gramophone.
Specifically, the artist’s work illustrates how these issues coalesce through visual representational practices such as television commercials, Hollywood film, and product design. Fusion Cuisine, coproduced with the Kitchen (an experimental nonprofit arts center in New York), playfully reveals cold-war American fantasies of consumer technology as gendered emancipation and national progress while exposing the racial and geographic erasures that form the basis of these visions of the future. The video consists
of two sets of footage: post–WorldWar II American commercials advertising domestic technologies and targeted toward white American middle-class women and contemporary footage of African women videotaped by the artist in Nigeria. Fusion Cuisine shifts continuously between the archival filmstrips of postwar fantasies of modern life and suburbia
and more recent images of domestic work and play in Nigeria.
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n visual artist.
Activity
Born in NigeriaNigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
and now based in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Fatimah Tuggar completed her MFA at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1996. Since she has shown her work in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
), the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and international biennial exhibitions such as the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005), Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
(2003), Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
(2005), Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and the Bamako
Bamako
Bamako is the capital of Mali and its largest city with a population of 1.8 million . Currently, it is estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and sixth fastest in the world...
Biennal, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
, 2003.
She has received numerous grants from distinguished institutions such as The Rema Mann Hort Foundation of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and The Wheeler Foundation, Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
.
Tuggar's body of work includes objects, images, video and interactive media installations. Collage and assemblage seem to figure into all of her creations with a focus often on Western
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
and some West African Cultures.
The objects usually involve some kind of bricolage
Bricolage
Bricolage is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process...
; combining two or more objects from Western Africa and their Western equivalent to talk about electricity, infrastructure, access and the reciprocal influences between technology and cultures.
Similarly, her computer montages and video collage works bring together both video and photographs she shoots herself and found materials from commercials, magazines and archival footage. Meaning for Tuggar seems lie in these juxtapositions which explore how media affects our daily lives.
Overall Tuggar’s work using strategies of deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
to challenge our perceptions and attachments to accustomed ways of looking. The body of work conflates ideas about race, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
; disturbing our notions of subjectivity
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
.
Works
The artist creates alluring digital photomontages that juxtapose scenes from African and AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
daily life. Her art turns the attention to the process and labor involved in constructing visual knowledge about gendered subjectivity, belonging, and notions of progress.
Tuggar’s media art relies heavily on computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
-based technologies and image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and AfterEffects. Her process uses the medium to comment on the medium itself; thus, she employs technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
as form and content to express and analyze its significance in the creation of current economic, cultural, and geographic systems.
Her works comment on potentially sensitive themes such as ethnicity, technology and post-colonial culture, although the artist chooses not to extend a didactic message, but rather to elucidate cultural nuances that go beyond obvious cross-cultural comparison.
For example in this 1996 sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
entailed Turntable, Tuggar uses raffia discs to replace the
vinyl record. The artwork speaks of the influence on language the introduction of the gramophone brought. Because of the physical similarly between the vinyl and fai-fai in many Northern Nigerian languages vinyl record get its name from raffia disc. For instance in Hausa
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
the raffia disc is called fai-fai and vinyl is fai-fain gramophone.
Specifically, the artist’s work illustrates how these issues coalesce through visual representational practices such as television commercials, Hollywood film, and product design. Fusion Cuisine, coproduced with the Kitchen (an experimental nonprofit arts center in New York), playfully reveals cold-war American fantasies of consumer technology as gendered emancipation and national progress while exposing the racial and geographic erasures that form the basis of these visions of the future. The video consists
of two sets of footage: post–WorldWar II American commercials advertising domestic technologies and targeted toward white American middle-class women and contemporary footage of African women videotaped by the artist in Nigeria. Fusion Cuisine shifts continuously between the archival filmstrips of postwar fantasies of modern life and suburbia
SubUrbia
subUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburban Boston hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate who has become a successful musician...
and more recent images of domestic work and play in Nigeria.
Selected exhibitions
- 2002 Changing Space, Art Production Fund, New York, Web Project (Solo)
- 2002 Video Room, Art & Public, Geneva, SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
(Solo) - 2002 The Avram Gallery, Southampton Collage, Long Island UniversityLong Island UniversityLong Island University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution of higher education in the U.S. state of New York.-History:...
, US (Solo) - 2001 Tempo, Museum of Modern Art, New York, US
- 2001 Empire/State: Artist Engaging Globalization, Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program
- 2001 Africaine, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, US
- 2000 A Work in Progress, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, US
- 2000 Poetics and Power, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, US
- 2000 Crossing the Line, Queens Museum of Art, New York, US
- 2000 The New World, The Vices and Virtues, Bienal de Valencia, Spain Bienal da Maia 2001, Porto, Portugal
- 2000 Celebrations, Galeria Joao Graça, Lisboa, PortugalPortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
(Solo) - 2000 At the Water Tap, Greene Naftali Gallery , New York, US (Solo)
- 2000 Fusion Cuisine, Le Musee Chateau, Annecy, France, “Fusion Cuisine”, Screening (Solo)
- 2000 Fusion Cuisine & Tell Me Again, The Kitchen , New York, US, Art & Public, Geneva, Switzerland (Solo)
- 1999 The Passion and The Wave, 6th International Istanbul Biennial, IstanbulIstanbulIstanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
- 1999 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, US, “Beyond Technology”
- 1998 Village Spells, Plexus.org (Solo)
Further reading
- Abel, Elizabeth, Barbara Christian, and Helene Moglen, eds. 1997. Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Bennett, Lennie. 2002. The Ironic Eye. St. Petersburg Times, November 10, 10F.
- Bobo, Jacqueline. 1995. Black Women as Cultural Readers. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
- Castells, Manuel. 2000. Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society. British Journal of Sociology 51(1):5–24.
- Conveyance. 2001. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: BintaZarah Studios.
- Everett, Anna. 2002. The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere, In Afrofuturism, ed. Alondra Nelson, special issue of Social Text 20(2):125–46.
- Fusion Cuisine. 2000. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: Kitchen; BintaZarah Studios.
- Gaines, Jane. 1988. White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory. Screen 29(4):12–27.
- Gever, Martha. 1990. The Feminism Factor: Video and Its Relation to Feminism. In Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, ed. Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, 226–41. San Francisco: Apeture.
- Janus, Elizabeth. 2001. Fatimah Tuggar: Art and Public. Artforum 39(5):147.
- Juhasz, Alexandra. 1995. AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
- Kaplan, Amy. 1998. Manifest Domesticity. American Literature 70(3):581–606. Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. 1999. Contemporary African Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
- Kincaid, Jamaica. 1988. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Kino, Carol. 2001.
- Fatimah Tuggar at Greene Naftali. Art in America 89(9):155–56.
- Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds. 2000. Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge.
- Kondo, Dorinne. 1997. Fabricating Masculinity: Gender, Race, and Nation in the Transnational Circuit. In her About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater, 157–86. New York: Routledge.
- The Lady and the Maid. 2000. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: BintaZarah Studios.
- Meditation on Vacation. 2002. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: Museum of Moden Art.
- Milani, Joanne. 2002. Continental Divide. Tampa Tribune, December 1, 12.
- Mitchell, W. J. T. (1992) 2001. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Postphotographic Era. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Morrison, Toni. 1993. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage.
- Muhammad, Erika. 1999. Black High-Tech Documents. In Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video, ed. Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler, 298–314. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Nelson, Alondra. 2002. Introduction: Future Texts. In Afrofuturism, ed. Alondra Nelson, special issue of Social Text 20(2):1–15.
- Robo Makes Dinner. 2000. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: Binta Zarah Studios.
- Scenes from the Micro-War. 1985. Directed by Sherry Milner. Chicago: Video Data Bank.
- Semiotics of the Kitchen. 1975. Directed by Martha Rosler. Video short. New York:Electronic Arts Intermix.
- Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
- Sobchack, Vivian. 2000a. At the Still Point of the TurningWorld: Meta-morphing and Meta-stasis. In Meta-morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change, ed. Vivian Sobchack, 131–58. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Suburbia. 1998. Directed by Fatimah Tuggar. New York: BintaZarah Studios.Tranberg, Dan. 2001.
- Works on Feminist Theme Reflect Individual Visions.Cleveland Plain Dealer, Art and Life sec., E1.
- Tuggar, Fatimah. Fusion Cuisine. Unpublished artists’s statement, the Kitchen, New York. 2000.