Biography
Interdisciplinary artist Fatimah Tuggar was born in Nigeria and raised there and in the United Kingdom. She has studied, lived, and worked in the US since the late '80s. Her work uses technology as both medium and subject to serve as metaphors for power dynamics. She combines objects, images, and sounds from diverse cultures, geographies, and histories to interrogate how media and technology diversely impact local and global realities. Her strategy is to be imaginative, adaptive, provocative, a culture jammer and a resistor if necessary.
Tuggar's work has been widely exhibited at international venues in over twenty-five countries on five continents. Including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Museum Kunst-Palast, Dusseldorf, Germany; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the 24th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Moscow Biennale in Russia; the V Salon CANTV Jovenes, Caracas, Venezuela, the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; the Kwangju Biennale, South Korea; Bamako Biennale, Mali; and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa. She is currently working towards a commission and participation in the 2023 Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates.
She has received awards and commissions, including a Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellowship, a W. A. Mellon Research Fellowship from Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University and a Civitella Ranieri, Fellowship. She has produced commissioned works for the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, Nordic Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; and the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, among other institutions. Tuggar has received many accolades, including the 2003 Prix Special du Jury at Les Rencontres in Bamako, Mali; the Young with FIA Award in Caracas, Venezuela in 2002.
Tuggar's art education covers three continents and a broader range of disciplines, traditions, processes, and materials. Her work has been the subject of various panels and articles. Her body of work has also been integrated into academic curricula in multiple disciplines and discussions, including cultural studies, feminism, diaspora, globalisation, anthropology, social and environmental justice, to name a few.
Challenging the segregated borders of aesthetics and cultural perceptions and facilitating diverse ways of knowing, making, and contributing is critical to her teaching. She has been teaching in higher education for a decade and a half. Her students have gone on to have productive careers in art and technology. She has contributed to academic journals and books such as the "72 Assignments: The Foundation Course in Art and Design Today, A Practical Source Book for Teachers, Students, & Anyone Curious to Try," Edited by Chloe Briggs published by Paris College of Art in 2013. To date, Tuggar has also contributed to fields of art and education with over a hundred lectures, artist talks and workshops at numerous institutions globally. Tuggar is currently an Associate Professor of AI in the Arts: Art & Global Equity at the University of Florida in the United States.