Zina Saro-Wiwa lives and works between Los Angeles and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Born in 1976 in Nigeria and raised since infancy in the United Kingdom, she studied Economic and Social History at Bristol University and worked freelance as a BBC producer, presenter, and reporter for over twelve years. Always rooted in storytelling, her practice began to incorporate art making to navigate her complex and tragic family history, as well as her understanding of the environment around us and our place within it. Saro-Wiwa has been working with local “illicit” gin since 2013 when she moved back to the Niger Delta to develop her art practice. Her gins are always present at studio visits, performance banquets, and at exhibition openings she curates. But more than just being a celebratory offering, it is through this gin and the Illicit Gin Institute that Saro-Wiwa hopes to instill a deeper appreciation for the natural world and the ways in which it is intertwined with human emotion and fate.

Saro-Wiwa is one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2016, recognized for her work in the Niger Delta. She was Artist-in-Residence at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn 2016-2017 and in April 2017 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Art. She has given talks and shown work regularly at biennales and museums around the world including Sao Paolo Biennale, Kochi Biennale, and the Tate in London. Her work can be found in the collections of MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others.