Alternative Futures and Resilient Communities: Josèfa Ntjam at Fotografiska Tallinn

Fotografiska Tallinn opens a solo exhibition by French multimedia artist Josèfa Ntjam, titled Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s), inviting visitors on a multilayered sensory journey. Weaving together stories of historical movements that have empowered the oppressed, the exhibition opens a door toward possible futures – a fluid and poetic presentation filled with hybrid forms, diverse media, and endless dialogues.

Ntjam’s work draws on the history and mythologies of the African diaspora, independence movements, and anti-colonial and liberatory ideas. Her practice intertwines historical events and narratives that reveal how depictions of resistance and liberation evolve over time, continuously shifting in meaning.

Informed by her engagement with science and biology, recurring motifs of water and nature – such as plankton, fungal networks, and the depths of the sea – symbolize invisible systems of resistance and strategies for survival.

A central figure in Ntjam’s visual world is Mami Wata, the West and Central African water deity who, in her works, becomes a hybrid entity. Ntjam merges sculptural forms of Mami Wata with microscopic images of plankton, using AI to generate new mythologies. Mami Wata embodies transformation and multiplicity and serves as a metaphor for how definitions and identities are shaped – and often constrained – by dominant power structures.

Josèfa Ntjam (b. 1992) is a rising voice in contemporary art. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (2024) and Art Basel Paris (2022).

Header: © Josèfa Ntjam