Eyenga Bokamba

Artist Bio

Eyenga Bokamba (she/her/hers)

@eyengabokamba

Eyenga Bokamba is a visual artist and designer who is most drawn to abstraction as a means of expressing the complexity of identity, politics, relationships, and my understanding of the world. Eyenga produces both small and large scale works on canvas and paper using mixed media, acrylics, watercolors, and calligraphy ink to create layers of translucence and expansive inquiry. Eyenga’s creative practice is based in the United States and Italy. Among her accomplishments are a Bush Leadership Fellowship, four solo shows in the US and one in Italy and induction into the National Association of Women Artists. Eyenga currently serves as a board member of the National Performance Network. Eyenga holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and completed her graduate studies at Harvard University.

Past shows include What will I do with all this freedom?  a solo show at the NAWA Gallery in New York City (2018), Personal Structures, a juried international group show in the Venice Biennale at the European Cultural Center (2019), the Minnesota Black Fine Arts Show (2019-2020) and the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Foot in the Door 5 (2020-2021). “My greatest desire, says the artist, “is to create work that pivots on an axis of understanding and advances our collective consciousness about what it means to be alive, thriving and empathetic in today’s world.”

Recent shows include Holding Space for Possibility on view April 25  – November 18, 2022 at the UM Physicians Mill City Clinic in Minneapolis and in Saint Paul at the Concordia University Gallery,  This Blue of Distance: New Paintings on view from November 3 – December 21, 2022. Eyenga partnered with faculty members of the MacPhail Center for Music in the Spotlight Series in February 2023. The show,  Translucent Beauty, featured Eyenga’s work on 12 silk sculptures, an ode to the creative process of collaboration. Check out this NE Arts District News article by Lisa Roy for more information on that performance. Eyenga is featured in the Alice Riot Collection on Blackdove and you can license and purchase Eyenga’s digital art with a Blackdove digital art subscription. In April, Eyenga was featured as a panelist on the NFT.NYC satellite event The Next web3 Wave: Women, Art and Fashion at the flagship DVF headquarters in New York City.

From April 14 – August 20, you can view Eyenga’s work by appointment in downtown Minneapolis in the show Abstractions at the Bridgewater Lofts.  Contact curator Jodi Reeb at jodi@jodireeb.com to arrange a viewing. Eyenga’s paintings have been added to the permanent collection at The New Uptown Cafe: two paintings from the “Adjacent to Happiness” series (2022) and an early work, “Roadmap to Joy” (2010). Eyenga’s work is also a part of the permanent collection of the University of Minnesota-Morris and is displayed in the new Division of Humanities building gallery. Most recently, Eyenga’s work was purchased by Delta Airlines and is on view in the Delta Sky Club at the MSP Airport in Concourse G.

Art-A-Whirl

Art-A-Whirl Main Page

Eyenga Bokamba is open on Friday, Saturday & Sunday of Art-A-Whirl weekend.

I am open all the days of ArtAWhirl and can’t wait to show you what I have been working on! If you’d like to set up an appointment, feel free to email bokamba2024@gmail.com to request a studio visit prior to ArtAWhirl. During ArtAWhirl, the limit of the number of visitors in the studio is 20 people at one time. Thank you!