If you've ever come face to face with an Atong Atem photograph, there's probably still a part of your brain that remembers it. These vibrant self-portraits vibrate with technicolour hues and often showcase her South Sudanese culture, seamlessly blending history, heritage and a vivid transendence that genuinely stops you in your tracks.
Using her own body as the ultimate canvas, Atem morphs herself into a kind of mythological storyteller, creating rich worlds that sing with memory, myth and political commentary, always underpinned by a celebration of the beauty of her Dinka Bor culture and Melbourne's African diaspora. It's wildly colourful, deeply thought provoking and utterly unexpected.
Atong Atem's work has made waves all over the world, but now, in an exciting world premiere, the NGV is set to stage her first-ever major solo exhibition in the city she calls home. Opening on October 30, Passage: The Art of Atong Atem will showcase bespoke works, as well as a number of other series that are getting either their Australian or world debut moment. We're talking more than 65 pieces all up, which will be the most comprehensive collection of Atem's art on record.
Running until May next year, the exhibition will center around the theme of journeys and movement. This is a personal exploration for Atem, who was born to South Sudanese parents in Ethiopia, immigrating with her family to Australia in 1997. Atem's work taps deeply into the memories and mythologies of migration amidst war and displacement, honouring the migrants of present and the past in unusual and magical ways.
Highlights are set to include ‘As Above’, a large-scale installation made specially for this exhibition, that's all about the stories of the stars and skies, with an emphasis on traditional beading, Dinka dance and Catholic iconography.
‘Banksia’ is a photo series revolving around African, African-American and Carribbean convicts and free settlers that came to Australia on the First Fleet, reconsidering Australian national identity in the process.
And the Australian premiere of ‘Scars and Constellations’, a series commissoned by the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, is a powerful photographic exploration of how the sea, sky and history of colonial trade and navigation meet, with the series focusing in on theme of scarification, an old Dinka Bor ritual of identity and healing.
“If the body is a terrain, who gets to be the geographer and who becomes the cartographer?” sayd Atem. “My practice as an early career artist has sought to make signposts on the body as a politicised landscape; to document, archive and speculate. These tensions between heritage, identity and place are at the crux of my impulse to make art. I am honoured to share these intimate and universal questions at the NGV in 2026.”
You don't want to miss this. For more information, head to the NGV website.
Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Melbourne newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.
