Josèfa Ntjam is an artist, performer and writer whose practice combines sculpture, photomontage, film and sound. Gleaning the raw material of her work from the internet and books on natural sciences, Ntjam uses assemblage – of images, words, sounds, and stories – as a method to deconstruct the grand narratives underlying hegemonic discourses on origin, identity and race. Her work weaves multiple narratives drawn from investigations into historical events, scientific functions, or philosophical concepts, to which she confronts references to African mythology, ancestral rituals, religious symbolism and science-fiction. These apparently heterogeneous discourses and iconographies are marshaled together in an effort to re-appropriate History while speculating on not-yet-determined space-times – interstitial worlds where systems of perception and naming of fixed (id)entities no longer operate. From there, Ntjam composes utopian cartographies and ontological fictions in which technological fantasy, intergalactic voyages and hypothetical underwater civilizations become the matrix for a practice of emancipation that promotes the emergence of inclusive, processual and resilient communities.

Josèfa Ntjam was born in 1992 in Metz, France, and currently lives and works in Saint-Étienne, France. She studied in Amiens and Dakar (Cheikh Anta Diop University) and graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Bourges (FR) and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Paris-Cergy (FR). Her work and performances have been shown in international exhibitions, including MEMORIA: récits d’une autre histoire, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, Bordeaux, FR (2021); Drift: Art and Dark Matter, residency and exhibition at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario, CA (in collaboration with the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB, 2021); Anticorps, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); La Manutention, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); Paysages alentour, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Risquons-tout, WIELS, Brussels (2020); Climate Knowledges, MAMA, Rotterdam (2020); 15th Biennale de Lyon, MAC Lyon, Lyon (2019); Feminism, Gender, Resistance – Act 3, Arnolfini, Bristol (2019); and Allegoria, duo Show with Kaeto Sweeney, Hordaland Art Center, Bergen, Norway (2019). Upcoming exhibitions include NıCOLETTı, London (solo exhibition, 2021); EUROPA, Oxalá, Africamuseum, Tervuren, BE; Mucem, Marseille, and Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães, PT (2021–22); CAC La Traverse, Alfortville (solo exhibition, 2022).

Ntjam is a member of Paris-based art & research collective Black(s) to the Future (https://blackstothefuture.com/).

Ntjam’s work is part of a number of private and public collections, including FRAC MÈCA Nouvelle-Aquitaine,Bordeaux; FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, FR; Fondation Villa Datris, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, FR; EIB Institute, Luxemburg;and Artothèque de Strasbourg, FR.