Josèfa Ntjam

Josèfa Ntjam is an artist, performer and writer whose practice combines sculpture, photomontage, film and sound. Collecting the raw material of her work from the internet, books on natural sciences and photographic archives, Ntjam uses assemblage – of images, words, sounds, and stories – as a method to deconstruct the grand narratives underlying hegemonic discourses on origin, identity and race. Her work weaves multiple narratives drawn from investigations into historical events, scientific functions and philosophical concepts, to which she confronts references to African mythology, ancestral rituals, religious symbolism and science-fiction. These apparently heterogeneous discourses and iconographies are marshalled together in an effort to re- appropriate History while speculating on not-yet-determined space-times – interstitial worlds where systems of perception and naming of fixed (id)entities no longer operate. From there, Ntjam composes utopian cartographies and ontological fictions in which technological fantasy, intergalactic voyages and hypothetical underwater civilizations become the matrix for a practice of emancipation that promotes the emergence of inclusive, processual and resilient communities. ...

NıCOLETTı is a London-based gallery committed to supporting the development of emerging artists. Founded in 2018 as an itinerant curatorial project, the gallery opened its first permanent space in 2019. NıCOLETTı’s programme focuses on researching and supporting emerging artists in the realization of institutional projects and museum presentations. Many of the artists represented by the gallery have held their first UK solo exhibition at NıCOLETTı and have subsequently exhibited in prominent international institutions and biennials. The gallery presents a diverse range of conceptually-driven practices, with a particular emphasis on how aesthetics can offer new perspectives on pressing socio-political issues. ...