nqma (pronounced “nyamma”) is a project-based collective of artists, art historians, and designers working with found images and appropriated texts, using performance and interventions in the built environment to pose questions about the politicization of bodies and space

nqma’s performances, public presentations, and exhibitions have appeared at Links Hall (Chicago), the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, and the Small Center for Collaborative Design (New Orleans), among others. our members’ projects have been supported by a residency at the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (São Paulo, Brazil), a Fulbright Foundation fellowship, a research fellowship from eikones iconic criticism research center (Basel, Switzerland), and an Andy Warhol Foundation Platforms Fund Exhibition Grant. 

nqma (literally, “there is not”) is a word that implies rejection, refusal, and negation. children commonly use it as a mode of refusal. its secondary meaning is as a feminine-gendered adjective designating something mute, silent, voiceless or inarticulate