Lina Iris Viktor is an Italy-based Liberian-British visual artist who is known her paintings, sculptures, photographs, and performance art.
She moved to the south of Italy in 2022[1] Viktor combines ancient and modern art forms to create multimedia paintings.
[3] Her parents left Liberia because there was a civil war going on in the 1980s, which is why they moved to the U.K.[4] She traveled frequently as a child and for numerous years lived in Johannesburg, South Africa.
[1] In 2017, The New Orleans Museum of Art contacted Viktor for a solo show exhibition that “speaks to interconnected histories of West Africa and the American South”.
[1] In an Interview with Ekow Eshun, he talks about inviting different artists including Lina Iris Viktor in 2022 to be a part of a show titled The Black Fantastic located at the Hayward Gallery in London.
[6] Eshun in this interview said that Viktor came to visit the Hayward Gallery and was immediately inspired to create "two new sculptural works and three new paintings for the show".
[10] In a book titled Africa State of Mind Ekow Eshun says Viktor "knits together events and images both factual and fantastical, [and] conjures Liberia as an uneasy utopia, both a paradise lost and cautionary tale of pathology of colonization".
[10] Viktor uses iconography from Liberia and the United States in hopes to emphasize "the depth and complexity of African history and experience".
[1] Throughout the series she incorporates bold red lines to mimic "tropical foliage" and geometric patterns to imitate "the crimson stripes of the Liberia's flag".
[1] The book, the robe, and the figures' posture are iconographic elements that pay tribute to the mosaic floor in the Siena Cathedral titled Sibylla Lybica.