FILM LONDON LODESTARS: Jenn Nkiru
"Jenn's work and achievements are incredibly strong and she almost feels in a league of her own at this point. She has an impressive body of work that shows a bold, trailblazing vision as a director."
Caragh Davidson (BFI NETWORK Talent Programme Manager)
Portrait of Jenn Nkiru during the filming of REBIRTH IS NECESSARY, 2017. Photo by Paula Harrowing
Jenn Nkiru is an award-winning visionary artist and director. Pushed through an afro surrealist lens, her works are grounded in the history of black music, the aesthetics of experimental film, international art cinema, the black arts movement and the rich and variegated tradition of cinemas of the black diaspora and their distinct experimentation with the politics of form. She was one of 75 artists selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2019 Whitney Biennial and in 2020 was the recipient of the Film London Jarman Award.
Jenn is the 2021 Grammy Award Winner for Best Music Video for her direction on Brown Skin Girl by Beyonce. She is also the winner of a CICLOPE, Soul Train, NAACP and Cannes Lion award for the same video.
Her first solo exhibition in Australia, Rebirth is Necessary, recently opened at the Institute of Modern Art, and her latest piece, Out / Side of Time, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York opened in November 2021 as part of their exhibition: Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room.
Jenn Nkiru, HUB TONES (2018), film still. Courtesy of the artist