Linda Lamignan ^(NO/NG)

Linda Lamignan is a visual and performance artist whose work tells stories about the experience of floating in between different worlds. Through video, music, objects and performance, Lamignan explores notions relating to wandering and diaspora, transformation and love. With an animistic approach, they work with materials connected to the industries in West Africa and Scandinavia, and by connecting the history of those materials/commodities to bodies with similar experiences, Lamignan seeks out to envision new alternative states.

Lamignan received their MFA degree at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and their BFA degree at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“My artistic practice is derived from the scattered pieces of my combined experience of growing up in Gabon, Nigeria and Norway. For the past couple of years, my focus has been on the ties between the oil industry in these two regions. Trying to understand this relationship, I have been looking at the industrial history of Nigeria, where groundnuts, cacao and palm oil were three of the biggest export industries before crude oil. In my work, I have used these commodities as materials. For instance paraffin wax derived from crude oil and aluminium have been added to my material depository, as both materials are directly linked to the present industries of both Nigeria and Norway. Applying the belief system of animism, seeing all things as alive and animated, each commodity/material tells its own story. Interest lies in the memory of the material, both memory of the historical development and significance of the material, and in the memory of transformation each material goes through.”