Josèfa Ntjam’s Solo Exhibition at Fotografiska New York Examines Diasporic Resistance Through an Afrofuturist Lens

Contemporary art museum Fotografiska New York is currently presenting its first institutional solo show in the U.S. by French Cameroonian artist Josèfa Ntjam. The exhibition, titled Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s), opened on February 2 and will run until May 24, 2024. The showcase features a selection of original artworks, spanning biomorphic sculptures and photomontages utilizing plexiglass and aluminum. Alongside these artworks, Ntjam has debuted an enthralling video installation, Matter Gone Wild, co-directed by Sean Hart and Nicolas Pirus. Futuristic Ancestry explores themes of liberation, identity and African diaspora through an Afrofuturist lens, blending science fiction, fantasy and history with disparate cultural archives.

Ntjam’s solo show expounds on themes and Afrofuturist philosophies presented in her 2021 inaugural solo exhibition Molecular Genealogies, which opened at the London gallery NiCOLETTi. Gesturing once again to clandestine resistance and underground coalitions, the multidisciplinary artist deploys a range of mediums, including sculpture, video and photo, envisioning these stories in perpetual motion. 

Within Futuristic Ancestry’s alternative ecosystem, Ntjam references Battlestar Galactica and the pioneering works of Octavia E. Butler, nodding to historical liberation uprisings while constructing fantastical interpretations that build upon the past. In these stories, Ntjam uses extraterrestrial life forms and the science fiction genre as a thematic vehicle, transporting visitors through colonial and familial histories reverberating across space, time and generations. 

Matter Gone Wild, in particular, finds poetic intersections between non-human and human grievances. By bridging Afrodescendant mythologies with magical realism, the imaginative video installation dives into the rippling effect of systemic oppression while charting a course for the future, where these generational traumas dissipate into new life and environments.

Through a genre-defying and cross-disciplinary approach, Ntjam’s speculative world-building awakens through layered sculptures incorporating sound and light, infusing intangible, space-bound musings with present-day dialogues. 

See a glimpse of Josèfa Ntjam’s Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s) in the gallery above. For more information, visit Fotografiska New York’s website.