D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem

D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem is transnational “space sculptor,” whose award-winning teaching, art, and writing bridge modalities of ritual, design, ecology, and Afrofuturity. Her practice reflects an ongoing engagement with site, body, visibility, identity, and the politics of Black femme labor within and outside of institutional spaces, expressed via photography, garment, synesthetic sculpture, digital experimentation, sonic intervention, and audience-interactive performance-activations. Her projects consider the poetics of trace under the frame of Pastoral Brutalism, charting a sensual scholarly engagement with architectures and nature-based environments as a return to embrace of the haptic role of shapeshifter, modes of protection, fantasy excavation, and expanded forms of memoir.

Denenge is an Afrofuturism Design Consultant and Curator, and founder of Denenge Design and In the Luscious Garden, focused on holistic, conceptual approaches to human-centered design. She is Associate Professor, Adj., in Core Faculty of the LRMFA Program founded by Gregg Bordowitz at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she lectures globally including at Wellesley College, Zurich University of the Arts, F+F Zurich, and other esteemed and community institutions.

Selected features include: V&A Museum London; Smithsonian Institution; ICA London; Arts Club of Chicago; Kunsthaus Zürich; Goethe Institut; Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin; ARTEXTE Montréal; U.S. Library of Congress; Red Bull Arts NY; Schomburg Center; Art Gallery of Ontario; MCA Chicago; and publications on AFRICOBRA co-founder Jae Jarrell, Kavi Gupta Editions for Venice Biennale; African Fashion (V&A); Vegetal Entwinements (MIT); Fleeting Monuments (U-Minn); AFRIFUTURI 02022020 with the Camo Coat Collection; ARTNews; Newsweek. Selected collections include Peggy Cooper Cafritz Collection, Studio Museum in Harlem, MFA Boston, and National Art Library of V&A London. She is a 2022 La Becque Laureate, 2016-17 Rebuild Foundation/University of Chicago Place Lab, and 2014 NEH Fellow.