Fatimah Tuggar

Fatima Tuggar at work as an artist-in-residence at Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

Fatima Tuggar was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, 1967. Tuggar studied at the Blackheath School of Art in London, England, received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated with an MFA from Yale University. She was a Whitney Independent Study Fellow and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.

Lady and the Maid, inkjet, 2000.

Tuggar’s digital art takes a critical look on technology’s impact on the world, most prominently her native Nigeria. One of the noticeable changes is the role capitalism plays in the shaping of domestic lives— its both damaging and beneficial. Yet Tuggar collages together images that show the invasiveness, the overall interference of colonialism and how that disrupts certain traditions. Some may find humor in the way she juxtaposes the frameworks of these narratives (like a Black family dressed in African wax cloth while a giant framed photograph of a rich white family hangs them). There lies an underlying tension, the impending danger of allowing Eurocentric ideas to take place of ancestral heritages.

Money & Matter, inkjet print, 2005.

Working Woman, inkjet on vinyl, 1997.

"While in art school in the U.S. I started to do my own research on women artists of the 60’s and 70’s. What left an impression was Womanhouse, the cooperative project that was a part of Cal Arts’ Feminist Art Program, founded by Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago. I also liked reading Judy Chicago’s Through the Flower. I found it to be cathartic after experiencing the overbearing, male-dominated environment of sculpture programs.

Since there are so many types of feminism and there have been debates over terms, I will explain my feminism. I do not ascribe to any particular school of thought. Yet like a radical feminist I believe that patriarchy leads to oppression of women. I also am not a liberal feminist, but I agree that political and economic equality is imperative. I will hold back from calling myself a Marxist or material feminist; instead I will say that I share a concern for the material conditions faced by many women around the world."-- parts of Fatima Tuggar's feminist artist statement from a 2001 interview with MoMA Curator Roxana Marcoci for "Threads of Vision: Toward A New Feminine Poetic," Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.

Tuggar has shown work at the Modern Museum of Art in New York City, New York, Centres Pompidou in Paris, France, Palais des-Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium, and biennials in Moscow and Mali.

She is currently an Assistant Professor teaching at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, Canada.