Senga Nengudi

Nengudi was named the 2023 Nasher Prize Laureate for her contribution to the discipline of sculpture.

The artist has also participated in a wide array of group shows and exhibitions, including the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

She moved to New York City shortly thereafter to continue her career as an artist, and she traveled back and forth between New York City and Los Angeles frequently. In 2016 she received an honorary arts degree from Colorado College. She works in Colorado Springs, Colorado where she lives with her husband, Elliott Fittz.

In addition to her installations, sculpture, and performances, Nengudi also creates paintings, photography and poetry. She has also curated exhibits, including the solo show of Kira Lynn Harris at the Cue Art Foundation in New York in the spring of 2009.

During her 2007 residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Nengudi incorporated video art into her practice for the first time. During visits to textile mills around the state, she recorded video and audio footage of the textile mills in full operation, and she also collected objects, like Jacquard punch cards, which were used to program Jacquard loom machines, mechanizing textile mills. In the final installation, Nengudi projected video footage onto a vertical screen of punch cards in a space with ambient sound from the audio recordings. The work explores themes of technology, the politics of labor, contemporary music, and the repetition of ritual dance.

She was a member of the Studio Z collective, also known as the LA Rebellion, that comprised African American artists "distinguished by their experimental and improvisational practice." David Hammons and Maren Hassinger, also members of Studio Z, were frequent collaborators with her work. In 1978, Nengudi paired with Hassinger for a performance piece in which the two artists improvised movement while entangled inside a large web of pantyhose. The performance symbolized the ways in which women are restricted by societal gender norms. Nengudi also took many staged photographs during this period. She often appeared anonymously in them herself as a genderless figure, defying definition.

Nengudi and members of the Studio Z collective (including Hammons and Hassinger) performed, Ceremony for Freeway Fets (1978) under a freeway overpass on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Nengudi designed costumes and headdresses made of pantyhose for the performers. Hammons and Hassinger played the roles of male and female spirits, with Nengudi performing as a spirit to unite the genders. Both the dance performance and soundtrack, performed by members of Studio Z, were improvised.

In 1975, following the birth of her son and seeing the changes in her body, Nengudi began her R.S.V.P. series (also known as repondez s’il vous plait), for which she is best known. Combining her interest in movement and sculpture, Nengudi created abstract sculptures of everyday objects through choreographed sets which were either performed in front of a live audience or captured on camera. The sculptures were made from everyday objects, like pantyhose, and parts were stretched, twisted, knotted, and filled with sand. The finished sculptures, originally intended to be able to be touched by the audience, were often hung on gallery walls but stretched across gallery space, evoking the forms of bodily organs, sagging breasts, and a mother's womb. For her, the use of pantyhose as a material reflected the elasticity of the human body, especially the female body. These sculptures as well as her later performance pieces involving pantyhose expressed a mélange of sensuality, race identity, body image, and societal impacts on women's bodies.

Nengudi has staged a large number of solo shows at galleries and museums in the United States and internationally. Her solo shows include Senga Nengudi (1971), California State University, Los Angeles; Vestige: The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus’ S.D. (1981), Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York; Warp Trance (2007), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Senga Nengudi: Improvisational Gestures (2015-2018), originating at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art; and Head Back & High: Senga Nengudi, Performance Objects (1976 – 2015) (2018), originating at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Following her graduation from Dorsey High School, Nengudi studied art and dance during the 1960s at California State University, Los Angeles, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1967. She then spent a year studying at Waseda University in Tokyo, in the hopes of learning more about the Gutai Art Association. In 1967, she returned to California State University, from which she received a Master of Arts degree in sculpture in 1971. During college, in 1965, she interned at the Watts Towers Art Center when Noah Purifoy was the director. She also worked as an art instructor at the Pasadena Art Museum and the Fine Arts Community Workshop.

Nengudi was part of the radical, avant-garde Black art scenes in both New York City and Los Angeles, during the 1960s and 1970s. Cheryl Banks was another artist who collaborated closely with Nengudi and with whom she corresponded frequently about their work.

Despite having been increasingly involved in the African American artist community in Los Angeles, when the "R.S.V.P." series made its debut, there was no significant public interest in her work. One of Nengudi's close friends and one of her art collaborators, David Hammons brought forth an explanation for the public's lack of interest in Nengudi's work, ascribing it to the abstract aesthetic present in many of Nengudi's pieces throughout the 1960s and the 1970s. Furthermore, Nengudi's "R.S.V.P" sculptures differed greatly from most of the art work made popular by her artistic peers in Los Angeles and New York. Nengudi was made aware of the perception of her art by the public as it compared to artwork made by her peers, particularly in New York, where some people felt she was not making "black art."

Nengudi's "R.S.V.P." sculptures have made more recent appearances in traveling group shows, including in the exhibition, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (from 2011–2013) and Blues for Smoke (2013).

Senga Nengudi (née Sue Irons; born September 18, 1943) is an African-American visual artist and curator. She is best known for her abstract sculptures that combine found objects and choreographed performance. She is part of a group of African-American avant-garde artists working in New York City and Los Angeles, from the 1960s and onward.

Nengudi was born Sue Irons in Chicago, Illinois in 1943. Following the death of her father in 1949, she moved to Los Angeles and Pasadena with her mother. As a result of an existing segregated school system, Nengudi found herself in between schools, transferring back and forth between Los Angeles and Pasadena. Her cousin Eileen Abdulrashid is also an artist.