Wilfred Ukpong is French Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose distinctive socially engaged practice utilises several interwoven mediums including photography, film, sculpture, performance and creative workshops to tackle pertinent social issues with community participation and intervention.
Ukpong’s works have been exhibited at Alliance Française/Mike Adenuga Centre (Nigera), FotoFest, Houston (USA), Institut Français du Nigeria Abuja (Nigeria), MARKK Museum Hamburg (Germany), Pipe Factory Glasgow (UK), Royal Society of Arts, London (UK), Welt Museum Vienna (Austria) amongst others. His long-term project Blazing Century 1 received a special grant from the Prince Claus Fund Amsterdam (2010); his film Future World (2017) won the Golden City Gates Excellence Award at ITB Berlin (2018). Ukpong received his BA/MA in Fine Arts from Ecole Supérieure d’Art Lorient, France and his PhD from Oxford Brookes University (UK). He lives and works between Oxford (UK), Clermont-Ferrand (France), and Eket (Nigeria)
“Community history, ecology politics, indigenous environmentalism, extractive capitalism, and cultural evolution, these meditations on my homeland demonstrate how the art and filmmaking process can be employed to promote youth empowerment, challenge colonial narratives and disrupt systems of knowledge production.”
Wilfred Ukpong
