Nitegeka was born in Rwanda in 1983 and now lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. He works in painting and sculpture and is especially committed to his large-scale, site-specific installations. Influenced by his early experience as a refugee, Nitegeka produces works that address issues of identity sparked by forced migration and cultural and political borders. His installations present obstacles that promote participation in the metaphoric experience: they physically bisect three-dimensional space and use the viewer as a further disruptive variable, resulting in a tableau vivant of sorts. Nitegeka’s acute, investigatory aesthetic sense places him within the rich art historical cadre of minimalism and abstraction, while the larger concepts he tackles resonate in the atmosphere of today’s global politics.

Nitegeka’s solo exhibitions include Finding Black, Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa (2022); Lost and Found, Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa (2021); Black Migrant, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA (2020); Innate Black, Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Personal Effects in BLACK, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA (2018); Ode to Black, Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa (2017); Colour & Form in BLACK, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA (2016); Structural-Response II, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, USA (2015); Morphings in BLACK, Boesky East, New York, USA (2014); Into the BLACK, Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa (2014); Black Cargo, Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa (2013); and Structural-Response I, Galerie le Manège, French Institute, Dakar, Senegal (2012), among others.

Group exhibitions include Lines of Sight, NIROX Sculpture Park, Krugersdorp, South Africa (2024); Between Borders, Museum Arnhem, the Netherlands (2023); Ubuntu, a lucid dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021); Mapping Worlds, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019); Remember to React: 60 Years of Collecting, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2018); Beyond Borders: Global Africa, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2018); Re/discovery and Memory, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2018); Abstract Minded: Works by Six Contemporary African Artists, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York (2018), and N’namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); Solidary & Solitary, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (2017); I Love You Sugar Kane, Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis, Mauritius (2016); A story within a story…, 8th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2015); What remains is tomorrow, South African Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Venturing Out of the Heart of Darkness, The Harvey B Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina (2015); This House, part of Nouvelles vagues, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); My Joburg, La Maison Rouge, Paris and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013); and The Space Between Us, ifa Galleries, Berlin (2013), etc.

Nitegeka was the recipient of the 2019 Grant Award from the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation, the 2018 Villa Extraordinary Award for Sculpture by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust, and the 2010 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts. In 2010, he was also selected for the Dakar Biennale, where he won a Fondation Jean Paul Blachère prize.

Artwork: Serge Alain Nitegeka b. 1983, Rwanda (now based in South Africa), Displaced Peoples in Situ: Studio Study XXVI, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 133.5 x 133.5 cm (52 1/2 x 52 1/2 in.)
© Serge Alain Nitegeka. Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Amsterdam. Photo: Thys Dullaart