Fatimah Tuggar (b. 1967, Kaduna, Nigeria) received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from Yale University.
Tuggar’s digital photomontages use computer technology and image manipulation software to juxtapose scenes from African and American daily life, as she draws from her own experiences of growing up and living in these two cultures. She explores themes of ethnicity, technology, consumerism, and post-colonial culture through her messages that lean more towards being cultural nuances that speak beyond simple cross-cultural comparison rather than didactic statements. Her work utilizes strategies of deconstruction to destabilize our notions of subjectivity, pushing us out of our comfort zones to face ideas about race, gender, and class. “My goal is to explore the diverse effects of power dynamics on the realities and interdependencies of our lives,” she states.
Tuggar has been featured in exhibitions at numerous institutions across the world including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), the Brooklyn Museum, the Gwangju Biennale (2000), and the Istanbul Biennale (1999). She lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee.
In 2013, works by Fatimah Tuggar were installed in an outpatient clinic waiting area at New York City’s Metropolitan Hospital.