Meet the nominees for the NN Art Award 2025: Bodil Ouédraogo

For the ninth consecutive year, the NN Art Award will be presented in 2025 to a promising artist showcasing their work at Art Rotterdam. This year’s nominees are Diana Scherer (andriesse eyck galerie), Marcos Kueh (Prospects section of the Mondriaan Fund, courtesy of Galerie Ron Mandos), Pris Roos (Mini Galerie) and Bodil Ouédraogo (Prospects section of the Mondriaan Fund). The work of the four nominees will be on view at Kunsthal Rotterdam from 15 March until 11 May 2025.

Bodil Ouédraogo (1995) is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a focus on the art of dressing up. Her layered work explores how we assign value and status to objects or people. She examines different ‘cultural tools’ that assign value or legitimacy to objects or people such as framing, preserving, distancing. She tries to dissect these tools, and reuse them to create movement in how we experience fixed ideas about people or objects. For Ouédraogo, the art of dressing up is far more than just clothing — it is a cultural context, a language that intertwines historical and social meanings. Drawing from her bicultural background, with roots in both the Netherlands and Burkina Faso, she weaves together materials, techniques and cultural references from West Africa and Europe into sculptural objects and installation created not only to be seen but also to be experienced. She approaches her practice in distinct artistic chapters, each investigating different aspects, while often combining cultural elements that may initially seem worlds apart.

A recurring thread in her work is the way we present ourselves in spaces, with clothing serving as an archive of heritage and identity. Ouédraogo seeks ways to honour all parts of the self, with a particular interest in those who came before us. Her installations and performances — where textiles, dance, photography, video, sound and sculpture come together — give rise to new narratives. They become innovative, hybrid forms, in which fashion operates as a conceptual and critical medium. 

Ouédraogo does not view identity as a collection of isolated elements, but rather as a network of interconnected stories that form a whole, effectively seeking connections. Through her work, she seeks to render this complexity visible, while rediscovering aspects of identity that have been forgotten or overlooked. She examines the interplay between various cultural aspects within Black culture and the European Afro-diaspora. Her multidisciplinary practice generates a rich, layered materiality in which the art of dressing up comes to life. Moreover, when her work becomes part of a shared reality, it creates a collective experience.

In her latest research she is fascinated by traditional West-African sculptures and ways of posing, bearing and positioning the self. Many of these artworks were taken to Europe as looted art and contain details that inspire her. At Art Rotterdam, Ouédraogo will present 3D-printed sculptures in PLA (a biodegradable plastic), cast aluminium and coloured glass, in collaboration with professional studios such as Audrey Large, Studio Lemarez, and Van Tetterode Glass Studio. These objects explore the relationships between bodies and show how materiality can contribute to a new meaningful connections with who went before us. For these pieces, Ouédraogo translates West African traditional wooden sculptures from the private collection of her father Mamadou Ouédraogo into a contemporary context, where she delves deeper into the boundary between human and sculpture.

Movement plays a crucial role in her installations. During Amsterdam Fashion Week and at the Stedelijk Museum, she presented performances in which dancers wore semi transparent grand-boubou, a three piece suit onto which projections were staged. Here, the body acts as a living archive, engaging in dialogue with fabric, movement and form. Fashion thus becomes a dynamic medium, continually taking on new meanings.

Ouédraogo’s practice is rooted in intensive research into the history of the self, and ways of self presenting. She is informed by research about the art of dressing up in the Afro diaspora as well as in West Africa, where she combines family visits with research on the art of dressing up in Burkina Faso, as well as in Mali, Ghana and Nigeria. She translates this knowledge into a visual language that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

At Art Rotterdam, her work will be on view in the 13th edition of Prospects, an initiative by the Mondriaan Fund. This exhibition presents work by 116 artists who received financial support in 2023 to aid them in the start of their careers. The section is curated by Johan Gustavsson and Louise Bjeldbak Henriksen. Explore all Prospects artists here.

Can you tell us more about the work you are presenting at Art Rotterdam and Kunsthal?
In my work, I aim to find connections in different cultural ways of ‘self presenting’. I examine different ‘cultural tools’ that assign value or legitimacy to objects or people. I try to dissect these tools, and reuse them to create movement in how we experience fixed ideas about people or objects. I try to shuffle the environment by presenting an alternative that allows another perspective. I try to show an alternative hierarchy than the one usually presented. I’m doing this by combining styles that uplift and question each other. Together they give me a broader, more grounded vision on how to be rooted.  

For the works that I’ll show at Kunsthal and Art Rotterdam, I do that by embodying African wooden art from the personal collection of my father, Mamadou Ouédraogo. In these pieces, parts of our heritage, you see how the people who went before us used to present bodiesthroughsculptures. What can I learn from the way these bodies pose? How can we stand in line with those who went before us? How do you visualise an imagination where all these parts are layered and transparent? I think that trying to portray all these parts of the self and giving light to forgotten or neglected parts of the self, asks for radical imagination. It’s a matter of taking up space, by presenting an alternative where you show that you are overly connected.

My work is an exploration of posing, bearing and positioning yourself. A longing for those who lived before us. Longing to express togetherness through material heirlooms. I try to capture the human intimacy of West African traditional sculptural wooden art. Expressing the generational connection by enlarging different intimate poses to human size. I propose to give them space in the present.

What are your plans for 2025?
I would like to delve deeper into the boundary between human and sculpture, how can I bestow these sculptures with an equal sense of dignity? I look forward to developing new techniques and challenging myself in the workshop. My aim is to create a visual experience where I can portray an alternative reality. To create something that cannot be placed in a particular category. An unfamiliar, science fiction reality. In October, my work will be shown in a solo exhibition at Melkweg Expo in Amsterdam. 

How did you feel when you heard you were nominated for the NN Art Award?
It is special to experience that people see what you do and believe in it. I feel blessed to be able to achieve this trust. I would like to thank the NN Art Award for the special opportunity. The fact that we will also exhibit our work in Kunsthal Rotterdam is wonderful.

If you won the award, what project would you pursue immediately?
I would love to explore and develop glass and aluminum casting techniques, as these are valuable materials. Winning would grant me the freedom to fully develop my ideas.

Bodil Ouédraogo studied Fashion at ArtEZ and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where she still lives and works. In 2019, she won the Dutch Design Award in the Young Designer category, and in 2022, she received the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts. Her work “My Hair, a Border” is part of the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, where it is currently on view in the permanent collection display ‘NOW - 1980’. Her work has also been presented at the Gwangju Biennale 2024, Dutch Design Week, the TextielMuseum, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Framer Framed. Additionally, Ouédraogo designed a collection for fashion house Patta. In 2023, she was named one of the fifty FD Talents of the Year by Het Financieele Dagblad.     

The winner of the NN Art Award 2025 will be announced on Friday 28 March at 20:00 in Kunsthal Rotterdam. During this celebratory evening, all exhibitions, including the NN Art Award exhibition, will be freely accessible to attending guests.

Geschreven door Flor Linckens