Ludovic Nkoth

For the Cameroon-born Ludovic Nkoth, displacement and deferral occupy a familiar place at the margins of the stories he tells. With swirled and meandering brushstrokes, Nkoth’s practice in figurative painting broaches the ongoing negotiation of transatlantic migration--a direct rumination on diaspora history and on his own expatriation to the US at the age of 13. Melding Cameroonian aesthetic motifs and vivid coloration with postcolonial allegory, Nkoth explores the formation and fragmentation of identity. Throughout his work, Nkoth’s figures participate in the fictions and lived experiences that comprise his own identity synthesis; each muddled expression and porous boundary imbues his paintings with the tender incandescence of a distant memory. The navigation of both belonging and outsiderhood in African and American spaces underscores much of Nkoth’s work, and informs the future-building of kinship, solidarity, and self determination that is central to his practice.

Ludovic Nkoth was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon in 1994, and lives and works in New York City. Nkoth completed his BFA at the University of South Carolina, and holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College. Recent solo exhibitions include Don’t Take This Too (2021) at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, and You Sea Us (2021) at Luce Gallery in Turin. Nkoth was featured in the group exhibition Black Voices/Black Microcosms (2020) at CFHILL Art Space in Stockholm, as well as in group exhibitions at Anthony Gallery, Chicago, and Ross+Kramer, New York. His work is held in the collection of the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. 

Image information: Ludovic Nkoth, Self Portrait