Wura-Natasha Ogunjiis an Austin-based artist working in both tiny hand-stitched images on paper and giant mural-sized paintings. She was born in 1970 to a Nigerian father and an American mother.
Ogunji says her work is about “images in dreams, ancestral, and cellular memory, and visualizing the connection to land and history.” Much of her work refers to the “Ife Head,” a Nigerian sculptural form that portrays an ancestral king or queen. She asks, “What would it mean for homeland to look for us? The Ife head looking for her descendants in an amazing journey across the sea from Africa to America.”
An artist, writer and performer, Wura-Natasha Ogunji has been an Artist-in-Residence at Can Serrat in Spain and Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic. She has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Selected exhibitions include Négritude at Exit Art (NY) and New American Talent: The 22nd Exhibition at Arthouse at the Jones Center (Austin, TX). Ogunji has also exhibited at The Oakland Museum of California, Intersection for the Arts and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco. She has a BA from Stanford University (Anthropology) and an MFA from San Jose State University (Photography). Ogunji was recently awarded an Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art.
Will van Overbeek is an Austin-based photographer. His work has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, National Geographic Traveler, Texas Monthly and other prominent publications. His photographs are in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Austin Museum of Art recently presented a solo exhibition of van Overbeek’s work, 24 Summers at Barton Springs Pool.
