Uman, “I will sit here and wait for you”

Born in Somalia and raised in Kenya, Uman landed in the U.S. via Denmark in 2004, and has since settled in upstate New York. As pleasant as those surroundings must be, it’s unlikely that they can match the majestic African landscape of Uman’s memory—or at least, you can surmise as much from her gallery debut. Paintings of leopard spot patterns and monochromatic profiles of camels are joined by a silhouetted self-portrait and a padded black-vinyl chair scrawled with the message, “I will sit here and wait for you” in white. It all resounds with the plaintive sense of loss familiar to exiles.