The work of celebrated photographer Atong Atem is currently on display at Tate Modern London, in the exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, featuring four major pieces from 2015.
In many ways, these are among the images that bolstered her career internationally. Today, Atem’s work is in high demand.
The Ethiopian born, South Sudanese artist moved to Australia in 1997 and spent her early years living on the Central East Coast region, before studying at The University of Newcastle (Australia). She is known for her striking photographic portraits exploring the African diaspora in Australia, and in particular Melbourne, where she has lived since 2014.
Atem’s images are typically staged, often against patterned and high chroma backdrops and build on the history of studio photography in Africa. Yet they remain deeply intimate and personal – seeming reaching out to the viewer.
In an earlier interview with Artist Profile magazine, she described her studio practice: ‘I was initially inspired by photo and video technologies as weapons or tools that were used by colonisers to further their colonial plans. It’s really interesting to me that the first depictions of black people seen by outsiders, and even by other black folks, were ones that framed black bodies in such a potent way that socially those frames still exist today. More than that though, I’m interested in the moment in history when black people took the camera and chose to photograph ourselves for ourselves’.
Atem has often credited the influence of Malian studio photographers, such as Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta and Philip Kwame Apagya. Consequently, her work is a good fit for the Tate exhibition given that same interest in lineage. The Tate show addresses how photography, among other mediums, has been used by artists to ‘reimagine Africa’s diverse cultures and historical narratives’.
The gallery explains: ‘The exhibition follows artists across the many landscapes, borders and time zones of Africa to reveal how photography allows the past and the future to co-exist in powerful and transformative ways.’
In the past, Atem has described photographs as ‘gestures’, as ‘examples of culture in flux’. Her latest project returns her to Newcastle (north of Sydney), where she immigrated as a child. Banksia explores the lesser-known history of Australia’s first African settlers – men and women who arrived on the First Fleet from the UK in 1788.
Newcastle Art Gallery says the exhibition is of a cinematic scale, and will be presented within an unconventional venue, featuring a beguiling video work propelled by an arresting score from composer Jerry Agbinya, alongside a suite of large-scale photographic prints.
‘This exhibition is a vivid offering that traces the cultural experience of belonging to two places, and how this history is remembered through images and objects,’ explains the Gallery, which is presenting the work for the New Annual festival.
Atem only began exhibiting her photography in 2016 – the year after the images on show at the Tate were made. That same year she was awarded the Melt Portrait Prize at Brisbane Powerhouse, and has since had a catapult career trajectory, included in the 2020 NGV Triennial, Rising Festival 2021 and PHOTO 2022 (both in Victoria). She was also awarded the NGV + MECCA Cosmetica MPower Grant in 2017, the Light Work (New York) residency in 2018, and the inaugural Art Gallery of New South Wales La Prairie Award in 2022.
Atem initially studied architecture, but the change in career path has come easily to her. She manages to capture the shifting role that photographic images hold in the migratory experience.
Atem continues in her conversation with Artist Profile, about setting the scene for her images: ‘I have a really solid internal image catalogue, I think. That’s the only way I can describe the process, because it’s really simple. There’s also a catalogue of visual languages that come from my immediate family, elements of South Sudanese, Dinka culture, so-called Australian iconography and so on,’ adding that she has refined her own visual language with time.
She concludes: ‘It mightn’t mean much to the global art world at large but my work and who I am matters in some ways to the people who speak my languages and understand my positionality, and maybe relate to my work on a personal level. There’s a sense of responsibility to respect that in some way.’
A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography is showing at Tate Modern, London until 14 January 2024.
Banksia is presented by Newcastle Art Gallery and New Annual festival, 22 September – 1 October. To view the program of events.
Atong Atem is represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne. The Artist Profile interview was original published in Issue 49, 2019.
