Disbelonging and unruly return in the performance art of Wura-Natasha Ogunji

ABSTRACT

This article examines the theme of disbelonging via unruly return in the performance art of Nigerian American artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji. Specifically looking to Ogunji's 2012 series Mo gbo mo branch/I heard and I branched myself into the party, the essay analyzes how Ogunji uses live performance to navigate Lagos as a queer, mixed-race American national, arguing that her refusal to be denied belonging while in Lagos and “crashing the party” disrupts easy understandings of belonging, citizenship, and cultural ownership. This article contends that Ogunji embodies return as a state of ongoing disruption and (re) imagining, for black women across the diaspora.

KEYWORDS:

• Disbelonging
• African diaspora
• unruly return
• Wura-Natasha Ogunji
• performance

Acknowledgements

I'm grateful to Wura-Natasha Ogunji for her generous insights, and the students in my “Migration, Exile, and Return” course for their rich reflections on unruliness. I also thank Craig S. Gingrich-Philbrook, E. Patrick Johnson, and the anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 “Trouble” in Nigerian pidgin.

2 My use of “respectability politics” here pulls from Rita Nketiah’s essay “Why Respectability Politics is Failing African Women and Girls” and builds upon the work of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, who coined the phrase “politics of respectability.” Though Higginbotham discusses respectability politics specifically as it related to the work of the Women’s Convention of the Black Baptist Church during the Progressive Era, the emphasis on “sexual conduct, cleanliness, temperance, hard work, and politeness” mirrors the white supremacist colonial logics of respectability that are still emphasized on the African continent today. Still, I intentionally pull away from using respectability politics, which has a history specifically rooted in the United States.

3 A structure, usually of stone, used as a pier between places separated by water.

4 Oga means “Boss” or “Big man” in Yoruba.