Exhibitions
THENJIWE NIKI NKOSI
April 4 - June 21st (Reception: April 4 5:00pm - 8:00pm)
Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi
Tri-Star Arts is pleased to present the next exhibition in their Main Gallery at the historic Candoro Marble Building. A solo show featuring recent works by artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi (Johannesburg, South Africa) opens Friday, April 4 and will run through Saturday, June 21, 2025. Curator: Brian R. Jobe.
An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 4, 2025 from 5:00 until 8:00 pm (artist in attendance). The address is 4450 Candora Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37920 and admission is always free of charge.
There will be an artist talk beforehand on the evening of Thursday, April 3, 2025 at the University of Tennessee School of Art (room AA109) co-presented by the UT School of Art Galleries.
Born in 1980 in New York, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi currently lives and works in Johannesburg.
Nkosi obtained her BA from Harvard University (2004) and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York (2008). She divides her time between studio work, performance, and navigating the field of art as social practice. Her work investigates the lived consequences of imperial histories and the personal dimensions of political identities, collectivity, and futurity, among other concepts.
Arena V (2024) was recently exhibited as a site-specific mural and installation in the lobby of the Hammer Museum. The artist presented, in collaboration with East Side Projects, the multimedia work Equations for a Body at Rest, across public spaces in Birmingham as part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Her solo exhibitions include Stadium, Stevenson, Amsterdam (2023); Landings, Stevenson, Cape Town (2022); Gymnasium, Stevenson, Johannesburg (2020); Gymnasium, The Africa Center, New York (2019); and The Beginning of Stories (Part 1 of Many), Seed Space/ Tri-Star Arts, Nashville, Tennessee (2017).
Notable group exhibitions include Get in the Game, SFMOMA, Los Angeles, USA (2024); Movements, Museum Hilversum, the Netherlands (2024); In Terms of Sport, New Taipei City Art Museum, Taiwan (2024); Power Plays, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, USA (2024);Thinking Historically in the Present, the 15th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2023); Resistance Training: Arts, Sports, and Civil Rights, the Broad Museum of Art, Michigan State University (2023); Fix Your Pony, Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University, Belfast (2023); CHAMPS, Granville Centre Art Gallery, Cumberland (2023); Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Orlando Museum of Art, Florida (2023); THE GYM, Soho Studios, Vienna (2022); When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2022) and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2024); New Formations, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Massachusetts, USA (2022); How to Make a Country, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France (2021); Mixed Company, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2021); Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2020); NIEPODLEGŁE, Women, Independence and National Discourse, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018); and Art Afrique, Le Nouvel Atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017), among others.
Nkosi is the recipient of the Helgaard Steyn Prize in Painting (2023); the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts (2019) and Philippe Wamba Prize in African Studies (2004).
Promotional photo credit: Nina Lieska
