Discover Mimi Cherono Ng’ok’s melancholic images at Nataal and Red Hook Labs’ group show, New African Photography II
Nataal and Red Hook Labs present Mimi Cherono Ng’ok as part of our nine-strong line up for New African Photography II, which opens this week. The Kenyan artist, who describes her practice as “an emotional cartography,” creates hazy, nostalgic images that capture a liminal state of being. Herself always on the move around the globe, she documents these travels not to reflect the geographical location but rather to express a sense of being adrift, uprooted and somehow lost.
Taken in cities across sub Saharan Africa and with recurrent motifs including horses, tropical plants, beaches and anonymous bodies, the works evoke feelings of both transient lust and lingering loss, of constant movement and a luminous stillness. Together they form a non-linear visual diary of a physical journey as much as they do an emotional one. They also speak to broader themes of home, displacement, family and identity that are recurrent in the artist's work.
Cherono Ng'ok was born in Nairobi in 1983 and studied photography at the University of Cape Town, where she created her first major bodies of work, before relocating back to Kenya. Recent group exhibitions include Afrique Capitales in Paris and Lille (2017), Dak’art (2016), Rencontres de Bamako (2015), Fondation Donwahi in Abidjan (2015) and National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi (2013). She has undertaken residencies in Côte d'Ivoire, Denmark, Brazil, Ghana and Germany and has been awarded a 2017 Magnum Foundation Grant. The in-demand artist will also concurrently on view at her gallery, Tiwani Contemporary in London, with the new solo show, Everyone Is Lonely In Kigali.
Nataal: New African Photography II runs from 4-14 May at Red Hook Labs, 133 Imlay St, Brooklyn, New York, open 10am-6pm daily
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Published on 30/04/2017