Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1980 Poznan, Poland

Year of Migration to the UK: 2008

Other name/s: Maja Absa Ngom, Maja A. Ngom, Maja Ngom

Biography

Visual artist Maja ∀. Ngom was born to a Polish mother and Senegalese father in Poznań, Poland in 1980. While originally interested in her African heritage, choosing to study Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Ngom was inspired by a university tutor, Professor Marianna Michalowska who spoke about the theory of photography as an artistic practice rather than as a documentary form of expression. In order to continue her studies in the visual arts, she subsequently moved to Brixton, London in 2008, where in ‘a neighbourhood which has a majority of Caribbean and African descent communities’, she stated, ‘my skin colour definitely allowed me to blend in, I felt at home’. She completed a BA in Fine Art Photography at the London College of Communication from 2009–12. She then received an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London from 2013–15. Ngom found that there was a persistent lack of diversity at university level among tutors as well as students: ‘It was clear to me that art-related educational institutions as well as art institutions themselves not only did not reflect English demographics, but quite possibly were not interested in the voice of minorities as individuals’ (Demidenko and Ngom, 2021).

Speaking to her experiences as an immigrant and being from a multi-racial family, Ngom’s work recounts fragmented narratives of fictionalised autobiographies, hybrid identities and otherworldly events. Two photographic portraits of her maternal grandparents from her degree show in 2015 featured in Ben Uri's survey exhibition from 2017, Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain. The silver gelatin prints pair images of her naked grandmother and grandfather, who brought her up in Poland (and with whom she remains extremely close). ‘The warmth and openness’ of these photographs, the exhibition catalogue states, ‘with her complex identity at its heart, is conveyed through the stripping away of clothing’, and ‘the inclusion of natural found elements reaffirms the significance of the Polish landscape and Ngom’s affinity with nature’ (Dickson, 2020). In an interview with the gallery she spoke, among other things, about her feeling of being ‘in-between’ in terms of national and ethnic identity (Ben Uri Online, 2017). The same year, Ngom exhibited in the Royal College of Art’s Gender Generation show, in which feminist engagements with gender and the maternal were explored. Other photographers included in the exhibition were Ana Casas Broda and Esther Teichmann.

Ngom’s multidisciplinary practice continues to encompass still and moving image, writing and sculpture in which she investigates her personal experience of dual, mixed-race heritage to examine how it shapes the sense of belonging, rootedness and being between cultures. Looking through the unique perspective of Black studies and an East European cultural context, Ngom continues to explore themes of embodied subjectivity against the background of family ties and social fabric. She exhibited at the Fade to Blue show at Pop Up Gallery, London in 2019, and in the Maja ∀. Ngom: 'All that they hide from Themselves will be revealed to Them' at Centrala Space, Birmingham in 2021; the second of which, combining photography and sculpture, continued to explore the themes of the multi-racial family, presence/absence, and intergenerational ruptures. In 2021 Ngom published a chapter, ‘Malleable Matter’, in Grandmothers and Grandmothering (edited by Kathy Mantas), in which she shared her 2015 photographs of her grandmother and reflected on rituals of passing on family identity and trauma. In 2020 her installation ‘The Sweet Taste of Otherness’ was exhibited in Zielona Gora Art Biennale, Poland. The gallery space was transformed into a multisensory, immersive space built solely of materials which were a repository of double meanings: that of the object itself and a pejorative reference to black skin colour. The sound in the show was a collaboration with sound designer and artist, Ania Mokrzycka. In 2022 Ngom's work was included in a group show Time out of Joint in MS1 at the Museum of Art in Łódź, Poland, which invited viewers to look for alternatives to current ways of experiencing time, and to attempt to treat life non-linearly in order to open up oneself to 'otherness'.

Maja ∀. Ngom lives and works in London.

Related books

Maja A. Ngom, 'Malleable Matter', in Kathy Mantas ed., Grandmothers & Grandmothering: Creative and Critical Contemplations in Honour of Our Women Elders (Bradford: Demeter Press, 2021), ch. 6
Rachel Dickson ed., From Adler to Żuławski: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain (London: Ben Uri Research Unit, 2020), pp. 114-115

Related organisations

London College of Communication (student)
Royal College of Art, London (student)

Selected exhibitions

Maja ∀. Ngom: 'All that they hide from Themselves will be revealed to Them', Centrala Space, Birmingham (2021)
Recovery, Chalton Gallery, London (2020)
Fade to Blue, Pop Up Gallery, London (2019)
Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2017)
Gender Generation, Royal College of Art, London (2017)
Ethereal Place, The Warehouse, London (2015)
Final Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London (2015)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Maja ∀. Ngom]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Maja ∀. Ngom photographer