Network, 2021
Born in Kano, Nigeria, 1970
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, BFA, Painting, 1994
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, BFA, Painting, 1994
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME 2004
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME 2012
Lives and Works in Princeton, NJ and Abuja/Kaduna, NG
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME 2012
Lives and Works in Princeton, NJ and Abuja/Kaduna, NG
MARCIA KURE (b. 1970) lives and works between the United States and Nigeria. Her multidisciplinary practice repositions drawing as a system of inscription through which materials are condensed, rerouted, and made to bear weight. She engages synthetic hair, indigo, kola nut, and gold as active agents within systems of circulation and material exchange. Her practice approaches substrate not as passive surface but as infrastructure, a site where histories accumulate and spatial relations are pressurized and reorganized. Across large-scale drawing, sculpture, and installation, Kure extends inscription from surface to structure. Kure’s work will be included in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2026). In addition to solo exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and the United States, her work has been presented at La Triennale, Paris (2013); the International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville (2006); and the Sharjah Biennial (2005). Kure produced a large-scale work for The Menil Drawing Institute’s Wall Drawing Series in 2021. She participated in the 11th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar (2014), and was included in the traveling exhibition Body Talk, shown at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Frac Lorraine, Metz; and Lunds Konsthall, Sweden. She also participated in Not a Single Story at Wanås Konst, Sweden, and NIROX Sculpture Park, Johannesburg (2018–19). Kure served as a Visiting Professor at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2019–20). She was a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (2008), a Visual Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2014), and the recipient of the Uche Okeke Prize for Drawing (1994). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Newark Museum of Art; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; the Princeton University Art Museum; the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art; the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University; Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth; Frac Lorraine, Metz; and the Menil Collection, Houston, among others.