Abena Motaboli

My practice is performative, contemplative, and transformative.

I am inspired by plants, nature, our living world, and my connection to land through home country Lesotho and Southern African culture.

I find joy in using pigments of the earth, working with flowers, learning about the plants around me, creating art from ephemeral materials such as soil, and sharing this urgent need that we have as a society to reconnect back to our lands. I am also interested in looking at history through reading the land and stories told by plants like tea and coffee, while deeply listening to them.

My use of tea stems back to my childhood, where we always had a stream of visitors and had conversations, storytelling over tea. This idea of community and storytelling are important to my practice.

Being an immigrant with a strong commitment to social justice work in the South and West sides of Chicago, my artwork comments on displacement, the African diaspora, the loss of the sense of home and a need to reconnect to our plant Ki and Kin. I invite the audience to find a space to contemplate through installation, written work, or my abstract tea and coffee paintings.

EDUCATION:
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Columbia College Chicago Graduated May 2017

Non degree study:
L’Institut Catholique de Paris, France February – May 2017

SELECT EXHIBITION HISTORY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022:
​Heaven Gallery; Confluence

2021:
The Good work exhibit, Color me Africa Fine Arts, Virtual, Chicago
The BRAAI, Silent Funny, Chicago
A Rostrum312 event, Chicago
Raw edge featured artist, Chicago

2020:
The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Virtual, New York
Group exhibit at Tradition, Chicago, IL

2019:
Substantial threads, two person exhibit at the Fulton Street Collective, Chicago, IL
SOFA Chicago exhibit, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Group exhibit, the Bhavan Gallery, London
New beginnings, 47th ward alderman office, Chicago, IL
International Beethoven festival, Chicago, IL