Bimbola Akinbola

“Transatlantic Disbelongings: Anti-Respectability, Queer Kinships, and Diasporic Homemaking in Nigerian Women’s Art" looks to the creative work of Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, ruby onyinyechi amanze, and Nnedi Okorafor, arguing that these cultural producers have helped expand possibilities for women artists within Nigeria’s most recent creative industry boom. The project contends that while much of the scholarly work about diaspora has focused on the loss of home and yearning for belonging, for these women, their experiences as outsiders have offered them the freedom to create home on their own terms. Using visual art, performance, video art, and interviews with the artists as guides, the project considers how their works embrace their own ambivalence towards familial, cultural, and national belonging.