Eyenga Bokamba

  • BIO

    Eyenga Bokamba is a multimedia artist born in Madison, WI and based in Minneapolis. Eyenga is committed to a rigorous exploration of multimedia abstract painting in which she creates large-scale immersive paintings and installations for purposes of the reconsideration of possibility in all realms. Eyenga has shown her work in the Venice Biennale, at Frieze Los Angeles and has had solo shows in New York City, Minneapolis/St. Paul and in Lombardy, Italy. International artist fellowships include Esperienza in Pennabilli, Italy and the Rural Residency for Contemporary Art (RUC) also in Lombardy, Italy. She is an active member of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA), and she currently serves on the board of directors of the Minnesota Citizens for the Arts (MCA). Eyenga is a recipient of a Bush Leadership Fellowship and has been inducted into the National Association Women Artists. (NAWA).  Eyenga earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota and a M.Ed. from Harvard University.

Artist Statement

I create immersive painterly worlds that delight the senses, sculpt whole environments, and function on multiple levels to address our political landscape, cultural myths, and intellectual conundrums.

I believe we can use our considerable gifts to radically reimagine our collective future. Where I start is where it all begins: the cosmos. The ultimate factory of production and spatial intelligence and cunning and beauty and ultimately, possibility.

My experience with the creative process is cellular and iterative, grounded in the fact that every seven years we are literally and actually a whole new person due to the regeneration of our cells.

My interest in and insistence upon iteration is a deliberate intellectual strategy to remind myself that I must look inward for inspiration and creative purpose. Insistence upon an iterative process means that the totality of universal creation is my birthright and is at my fingertips, just as it was for my brilliant ancestors, those brave, creative people who crossed the Iberian Peninsula, the Mississippi Delta, the Congo basin, the Amazonian rainforest.

I am fascinated by the dimensionality and sculptural quality of translucence, how it causes a rupture in space and demands consideration. I initially embarked upon my career as a painter to render the act of cognition visible; this fascination with neuroplasticity continually drives my creative process. My work as a painter is also deeply informed by my training as a writer and background in performance art.

I see my work as a union between abstract expressionism and the critical pedagogy of installation art. I find myself continually reflecting upon the spatial footprint and cultural impact of my artistry.  I position my work within the context of other contemporary artists whose practice lives at the intersection of a desire for social transformation and a commitment to beauty.

My existential questions to date build upon my curiosity about the relationship between my current, longstanding painterly preoccupation (overlapping spaces of translucence and luminosity) and the architectural, the sculptural, the mechanic.

The act of creating inviting, transformative, reflective spaces allows me to inhabit multiple identities in new ways, expanding my ability to participate in current national and global conversations. I strive to invite, through beauty, the generous reconsideration of the expansion of possibilities for all people. My artistry is a nod to process and experimentation, longing and possibility, and to the importance of being awake to the investigative process.

Little About Eyenga

What inspires your work?

I am a writer who paints, a painter who identifies as a sculptor. 

I shared in my artist bio that I am fascinated by the dimensionality and sculptural quality of translucence, how it causes a rupture in space and demands consideration. My existential questions to date build upon my curiosity about the relationship between my longstanding painterly preoccupation (overlapping spaces of translucence and luminosity) and the architectural, the sculptural, the mechanic.

What is something unexpected about you that often surprises people?

I’m worldly and love, love, love to travel, and I am deeply and utterly a Midwesterner. I may even be a Minnesotan by now.

What do you consider your most significant achievement as an artist?

Showing my work at the European Cultural Center in the 2019 Venice Biennale was a highlight of my career…to be juried in to an international show and share the platform with Yoko Ono and other esteemed, celebrated artists was so affirming. 

The piece, entitled Moments of Beauty, Reframed, Create a Blueprint for Thriving/If We Just Learn to Pivot (2019) was composed of three silk cubes, 30x30x30 each, suspended from the ceiling of a Venetian palace. Viewers literally had to pivot their stance to view the work in its entirety. I was honored to participate in the show.

How has your work evolved over time?

Over the past 20 years as a painter, I have seen my work shift in terms of composition, use of white space as a design element, and the expansion into paintings as sculptures, lighting, design elements. I feel I’ve become freer and more expressive over the last decade of my practice.

Is there a particular medium or subject you're drawn to, and why?

Since 2020 I’ve been drawn to the subject of adjacency as an organizing concept in my work…as in: I can be adjacent to happiness in these times, I can be adjacent to joy, I can be adjacent to wonder. I still believe I can possess all of these experiences outside of the concept as well, however, allowing for adjacency pushes my conceptualization further, so I can exist in the duality of sorrow and beauty and use that tension to delve into the complexity that this moment demands.

What's the most challenging part of being an artist?

There is literally never enough time to actualize the 1,000,000 visions in my head.

Do you have a favorite piece you've created? Why does it stand out?

My painting Keep Going Until You Run Out of Paint (2022) is one of the Adjacent to Happiness paintings, and it is a large-scale work about my mother’s health and wellness journey post stem-cell transplant.  My mother is cancer-free now, and the painting is a testament to emotional and psychological strength, knowledge as power, and my maternal lineage. I’m honored that this important work is in the collection of NorthPoint Wellness Center in Minneapolis.

Where were you born and where did you grow up?

I was born in Madison, WI and l grew up in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa with a short stint living in Nigeria while my professorial dad taught at a university there. And while I didn’t live there for long, my first visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo was deeply meaningful as my father is from the DRC. I moved to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for my undergrad degree and now call Minneapolis home.

Who are your artistic influences or mentors?

I’ve claimed Emily Mason and Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly and Jack Whitten as my painterly grandparents.

What advice would you give to emerging artists?

Substantial bodies of work come from putting time into task. Time on task equals success. Make something, do something, every day. Creation is habit. Habit will hold you, elevate your work, be the backbone of your career.

Eyenga's Art