Josèfa Ntjam
Fractured self
Imagine yourself as a mosaic - each shard a memory, each fragment a story. Identity is fragmented, nonlinear, imperfect. Through collage, artists reassemble past and present into visual diaries, embracing the messiness of memory to reveal a self that is ever-evolving, resilient, and beautifully incomplete.
View SeriesJosèfa Ntjam
Josèfa Ntjam creates speculative, multidimensional worlds that reimagine memory as fluid, dynamic, and open to reinvention. Born in Metz in 1992, she blends sculpture, film, photomontage, and sound to construct new narratives of identity, rooted in African history, mythology, and science fiction.
Her work challenges fixed ideas of race and origin, drawing on themes of colonialism, displacement, and liberation. In pieces like Mélas de Saturne, she transforms melancholia into a generative force, fusing oceanic imagery with digital landscapes. Ntjam’s installations dissolve boundaries, proposing identities that are porous, collective, and evolving—inviting us to dream futures beyond the constraints of inherited histories.
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"Science fiction lets me create in-between worlds with hybrid and mythological landscapes."
- Josefa Ntjam
Exhibition: Holy Water..., 2023
Holy Water: Discussion with Mami Wata, 2023, Performance at Lafayette Anticipations,
The Deep & Memories (Maquisards), 2023
In this circular UV print on plexiglass, Joséfa Ntjam conjures a swirling cosmos of fractured histories and layered identities. Figures and textures seem to dissolve into one another, evoking the fading yet resilient traces of colonial resistance. The circular form recalls cycles—of memory, of erasure, and of reclamation—immersing us in an orbit where personal and collective histories intertwine.
The Deep & Memories (Melting...), 2023
This floating, cloud-like form brims with poetic energy. Words and images shimmer on its surface, embodying the ephemeral nature of memory—fluid, malleable, and constantly shifting. Ntjam’s luminous layering encourages us to reflect on how identities are shaped and reshaped through time, carried like whispers across generations.
"There are mythologies that recur often in my work—mythological figures tied to revolutionary spaces. The first is Marthe Ekemeyong Mouto, who fought for Cameroun's independence in 1960. Another is Mami Wata, who comes to life and takes form through a totem.”
- Josefa Ntjam
"Too often have we been the subjects of experimentation, and so we have decided to create our own landscapes, to unsettle visions that were used to naming ‘otherness’ without ever letting it express itself. We have decided the naming through abstraction. A fraying of cantankerous words, too often digested in times past. Polyphemus was not mistaken: we are persona.”
- Josefa Ntjam
Exhibition: 60th Venice Biennale.
Installation view: Josefa Ntjam, swell of spæc(i)es, 2024. An official collateral event of the 60th Venice Biennale.
"What does it mean to be inside a film? Or even to feel a performance? For me, it’s almost like being in a giant video game, where you can navigate and encounter characters, details, and landscapes.”
- Josefa Ntjam
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