Mani Kambo: RIFT

About

Mani Kambo has experimented with various printing methods to create abstract, dream-like visuals, developing ideas explored in her recent exhibition, ‘Semblance’, at System Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne. Through collage and layered imagery, the work acts like fragments of memory left behind for the viewer to piece together.

Kambo explores the inner spirit by drawing on her own personal totemic symbols. Influenced by her upbringing in a household filled with superstition, prayer and religious ceremony, she focuses on objects, routines and rituals distilled both from the everyday and mythology.She plays on the senses by creating her own scented objects, including hand-made paper mixed with lavender, traditionally used to aid sleep, to calm and believed to have healing properties. The scents trigger the viewer’s own feelings and memories: inducing a sense of nostalgia.

In ‘RIFT’, Kambo uses video projection to connect the viewer to the fleeting moments of dreams; exploring the difficulty of memory and the sporadic, ever-changing nature of dream logic. The more we try to remember, the more fragmented and hazy it becomes. Whether remembering an image, a feeling, or colour, the vision is abstracted, elusive: are we really remembering or are we remembering trying to remember?

Mani Kambo was born in 1992 in Newcastle upon Tyne where she lives and works. She received a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 2014. Recent group exhibitions and screenings include ‘Playback’, in association with Random Acts, ICA, London, touring exhibition (2017-18), ‘Something Good’, OUTPOST, Norwich, ‘Exposing Form’, Vane, Newcastle upon Tyne (2017), ‘Video Social Club#2: Post-Everything’, Sea Change, Plymouth (2016), ‘Ickle Film Fest’, Dundee, and ‘Praxis Emerging Artists’, Praxis Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne(2015). Solo exhibitions include ‘Semblance’, System Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne(2018), and ‘Janus’, 36 Lime Street, Newcastle upon Tyne(2017). Her short film ‘Towards a Summoning’, was shown as part of Channel 4’s Random Actsin 2017. She was Tyneside Cinema Graduate Artist in Residence (with Hope Stebbing) in partnership with Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 2015-16.