Nokukhanya Langa was born in Silver Spring, Maryland. She grew up in the United States and South Africa and has lived in India, the Netherlands, and Belgium. She is currently based in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Her practice spans installation and painting, exploring memory, African diasporic identity, inheritance, and the psychological architectures that shape human experience. Langa is interested in what happens to the minds of those living in a racialized body. Through what she describes as a process of personal cartography, she maps themes of memory, migration, repression, desire, perception, culture, spirituality, and disembodiment to examine the cerebral dimensions of subjectivity.
Langa obtained her Bachelor in Studio Art from Moravian University (honours), USA, received a certification in industrial welding from OPJCC, India, and completed her Master of Arts (cum laude) at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands which she attended with the Holland scholarship. She was a resident at HISK in Ghent, Belgium (2020–22) and PLOP Residency, London (2023). She has presented solo and group exhibitions in London, Belgium, France, Germany, New York, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Shanghai, and exhibited in a duo exhibition alongside Bruce Nauman. Her institutional shows include WIELS, Brussels, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Kunstinsituut Melly, Rotterdam, S.M.A.K., Gent, and Museum de Buitenplaats, Netherlands. Her work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, MHKA Antwerp, and S.M.A.K. Gent. She’s been nominated for the Belgian art prize, Lingen art prize, and Pomona art fund and has received awards from the Mondriaan Fond and the CoCA art commission.