Divination Painting (Exotic Dawn), 2020, Oil on linen, 204 x 170 cm. Portrait by Renato Grome.
December, 2020
Institutional Acquisition, Landesmuseum, Austria
Jebila Okongwu is pleased to announce that the Austrian Landesmuseum has acquired Divination Painting (Exotic Dawn) for its permanent collection. Established in 1833, the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum is the largest and most important museum institution in the state of Upper Austria and maintains extensive collections and scholarly archives as well as permanent and special exhibitions in the fields of nature, culture and art history. The institution of the OÖLM manages numerous locations with a variety of focuses: the Schlossmuseum, the Landesgalerie and the Biologiezentrum in Linz as well as a series of museum institutions in the Federal State of Upper Austria.
Sept 30, 2020 - Jan 6, 2021
Friends and Friends of Friends, Schlossmuseum, Linz, Austria
Artistic communities once depended on face-to-face meetings and discussions. Artists shared studios, went on joint excursions, formulated programs with specific goals and actively recruited members. Artistic communities in the age of social media connect online and are in direct exchange. They depart from an academic approach and, like the Young British Artists, have found new means and strategies to exhibit and distribute their own work. They share their art via the social network Instagram, provide insights into the creation of their works and talk publicly about their work process in livestreams. Unlike the net artists who have been creating net-based and digital works since the 1990s, the artists featured in the exhibition work through the medium of painting and sculpture. Their point of reference runs from Pop Art to Post-Internet Art. The themes they explore include consumption and identity, technology and sexuality, and media and privacy.
Curated by Inga Kleinknecht, the exhibition features 19 artists who were jointly selected by artist Oli Epp and the British writer and curator Aindrea Emelife. "Friends and Friends of Friends" highlights the potential of a globally connected world through the example of a community of young artists, who advance artistic and social debates both online and offline.
September, 2019
100 Sculptors of Tomorrow, Kurt Beers, Thames & Hudson
Jebila Okongwu has been included in '100 Sculptors of Tomorrow', the culmination of a major undertaking to identify the 100 most exciting, up-and-coming sculptors at work today. The 100 artists included in the publication were selected by a distinguished panel of international jurors and the book is the follow-up to the groundbreaking and highly-regarded 2014 publication, '100 Painters of Tomorrow'. Like its predecessor, the book is authored by Kurt Beers, Director of Beers London, and published by Thames & Hudson.
Jan 18, 2019 - Jan 20, 2019
UNTITLED, San Francisco
Untitled, Art is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. Untitled, Art innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue. Baert Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Untitled Art with a solo presentation of works by Jebila Okongwu. Booth A20, Pier 35,1454 The Embarcadero, San Francisco.
July 12, 2018 - August 24, 2018
Schengen, Villa Romana, Florence
Schengen is a three-part exhibition that examines the limitations of socio-cultural and political borders through a totemic memorialization of the migration of bodies and goods. Drawing upon transnational identity and the blue water of the Mediterranean as fluid conceptions of legality and humanity the works problematize the values instilled by international agreements whose fallen fruits too often die on the vine. The destabilizing of the environmental impact of fading traditions, the evasion of prescribed images of nationalistic belonging and the escalation of global crisis set the foundation for ruptured canons and displaced cultural legibility. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, the artists Délio Jasse, Anna Raimondo and Jebila Okongwu will engage in a dialogue with the curators Janine Gaëlle Dieudji and Justin Randolph Thompson and the public, to provide insight to their work and to the broader themes embraced by the exhibition.
May 16, 2018 - December 4, 2018
Manhattan Office, 125 Maiden Lane, New York
To mark the 10th year of the banana motif in his art, Jebila Okongwu has created a limited edition cocktail table. Constructed with his signature technique of stitched banana box cardboard, the table has been cast in bronze by master craftsmen. A selection of banana boxes, Okongwu's favorite material, have been flattened and are displayed under glass. The boxes have actually been used for shipping bananas from tropical countries and each edition of the table has a unique combination of boxes which have been selected and arranged by the artist himself.
Designed with your elite lifestyle in mind, the Banana Box Cocktail Table is suitable as either corporate or domestic decor and has been finished to a level of uncompromising luxury. Every detail of the artist's handwork has been meticulously captured in the bronze casting on which a black patina has been applied and then polished to a lustrous sheen. The delightful exotic designs and colorful graphics on the boxes are visible through a 3/8" thick piece of optically clear glass. The table is limited to a production of just 10 editions per year.
The Banana Box Cocktail Table will be premiered in an installation entitled 'Manhattan Office' in New York City. The sleek marble lobby of 125 Maiden Lane in the Financial District will also house one of the artist's iconic Banana Sculptures and two of his enigmatic Divination Paintings. Curated by Jennie Lamensdorf, the exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings, a program that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces.