​Wilfred Ukpong (PhD) is French-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist, scholar and practice-based researcher whose distinctive socially engaged practice utilizes several interwoven mediums, including photography, film, music/sound, sculpture installation, performance, architecture, and creative workshops, to tackle pertinent social issues with community participation and intervention. His overarching focus is on exploring and extending the framework of connective social practice, indigenous practice, ecology politics, new materialism, spatial justice, decolonization, globalization, visual and material culture, Afrofuturism and speculative futures. Ukpong has over thirty years of experience in interdisciplinary studio-art practice, museum and academic research, socially engaged art, and African art historical knowledge spanning indigenous, modern, contemporary, and African Diaspora.

 

​Ukpong’s works have been exhibited at Alliance Française/Mike Adenuga Centre (Nigeria), FotoFest, Houston (USA), Institut Français du Nigeria Abuja (Nigeria), MARKK Museum Hamburg (Germany), Pipe Factory Glasgow (UK), Royal Society of Arts, London (UK), Welt Museum Vienna (Austria) amongst others. His long-term project Blazing Century 1 received a special grant from the Prince Claus Fund Amsterdam (2010); his film Future World (2017) won the Golden City Gates Excellence Award at ITB Berlin (2018) and was presented at the Nigerian Senate to encourage environmental change in the Niger Delta. His first UK solo exhibition, BC1: NIGER-DELTA/FUTURE-COSMOS, curated by Dr Mark Sealy (OBE), opens at Autograph-ABP London from 16th Feb till 1st Jun 2024.

 

​Ukpong received his BA/MA in Fine Arts from Ecole Supérieure d'Art Lorient, France, and his PhD from Oxford Brookes University (UK). He is the founder and director of Blazing Century Studios (Nigeria, France & USA). Ukpong lives and works between Oxford (UK), Clermont-Ferrand (France), and Eket (Nigeria).