(upcoming 2024 commission)

An unclassifiable polymath, British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando creates Afrofuturist speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music and multi-sensory installations. She proposes new myths, rituals and provocations for perceptual change, radical care and transformation of the self and community, drawing from science fiction, Black Atlantic ritual cultures, biophilia, neuroscience, her own neurodivergency and Nigerian heritage.

In 2021 Nwando was nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer award for her Radiophonic piece: Fire Prevention.

As a composer and musician, she was awarded the Oram Award with special commendation (2019) and a British Council Musician in Residence (2018) amongst others, and has been commissioned by Aurora Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Radiophrenia. Her music and sound pieces have been broadcast on BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, NTS Radio, Worldwide FM and Resonance FM. Her critically-acclaimed works include the multimedia installation Distorted Constellations and ecstatic operatic experience Hildegard: Visions. Her work including live art gigs, sound art installations and curated happenings, has been performed at Barbican, Southbank Centre, Wellcome Collection, Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Hepworth Wakefield, Melbourne Science Gallery, Tate Britain, Art/Science Singapore, Rewire Festival (The Hague) and Donau Festival (Krems).

Upcoming works include commissions for Opera North, Sky Arts, London Sinfonietta and Invisible Flock. Future residencies include the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Her critically acclaimed first EP The Passion of Lady Vendredi on her own imprint Tears In The Rain records caught the ears of taste makers such as Gilles Peterson, The Wire and BBC 3’s Late Junction. This EP was supported through Peterson’s Steve Reid Foundation and as a Steve Reid Innovation award winner she was mentored by Floating Points, Emanative and Brownswood Records.

She has performed at clubs and festival stages worldwide as her art-pop alter-ego Lady Vendredi (a blaxploitation heroine from another dimension), including performances at Latitude Festival, Kings Place, the Barbican, Southbank Centre, Bonobo (Tokyo), Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Blok (Zurich) and opening for Mykki Blanco, Peaches and Princess Superstar.

As a composer and musician, in 2022 she released her debut album The Swan – a work of sonic fiction into the imagined world of a matriarchal community – which is now out on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records. Nwando composed a piece for Zubin Kanga’s new album ‘Dream Machines’, titled ‘I will fix myself’; the first single released in March ‘23 on Non classical.