Ludovic Nkoth

For the Cameroon-born Ludovic Nkoth (b. 1994, Yaoundé, Cameroon), displacement and deferral hold familiar places within a practice full of storytelling. With swirled and meandering brushstrokes, Nkoth’s figurative painting explores transatlantic and cross-Mediterranean migration present and past against the backdrop of the artist’s own adolescent expatriation to the US. Melding Cameroonian aesthetic motifs and sumptuous coloration with postcolonial allegory, Nkoth explores the formation and fragmentation of identity. Throughout his work, 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 memory. The navigation of both belonging and outsiderhood in African and American spaces underscores much of Nkoth’s work, and informs the futures of solidarity and self-determination that are central to his practice.

Ludovic Nkoth 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. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Maison La Roche, Paris, France; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, USA; Simões de Assis, São Paulo, Brazil; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; Massimo de Carlo, London, UK; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA; Ross + Kramer, New York, USA; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA; and Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy. Nkoth’s work is held in the collection of the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.