Through her practice centered on photography, textiles, and ceramics, Mpoka addresses nuanced themes related to migration, cultural trauma, self-image, memory, and environmental colonialism. Moving across analog photography, handprinting techniques, and natural dying on textiles, she weaves together archival images, family photographs, and self-portraitures to create poetic compositions that marry personal experience and collective memory. Her organic sculptural installations explore notions of place-making and place-based knowledge among African and Afro-descendant diasporas and untangle complex histories related to colonialism. Growing up between cultures and continents, she places special emphasis on the land being a site of trauma and possibilities, as well as on its inextricable links to identity formation.
Mpoka was a Villa Lena Foundation artist-in-residence in 2021 and has been nominated as a finalist for the Access ART x Prize 2022-23 by Art x Lagos and Yinka Shonibare’s Foundation. She is also the winner of the Malick Sidibé prize by the African Biennale of Photography, and the New Generation Award by the National Gallery of Canada. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at Atiss Dakar Gallery, 1-54 NYC, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, Art Gallery of Ontario, Gardiner Museum, among others.
The Self-Portrait Project II
18.5 x 21.5 Edition of 3 (+ 2 AP)
Analog photography, wood engraving, Shou Sugi Ban wood burning
Material: inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper
The Self-Portrait Project I
18.5 x 21.5 Edition of 3 (+ 2 AP)
Analog photography, wood engraving, Shou Sugi Ban wood burning
Material: inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper
Questions for Deborah
19 x 22 Edition of 3 (+ 2 AP)
Analog photography, wood engraving, Shou Sugi Ban wood burning
Material: Inkjet print on archival cotton rag paper
The Things We Carry
19 x 22 Edition of 3 (+ 2 AP)
Analog photography, wood engraving, Shou Sugi Ban wood burning
Material: Inkjet print on archival cotton rag paper
The Matriarch (Unravelled Treads)
Natural dyeing, screen printing, transfer, embroidery, analog photography
Red earth pigments, cotton, linen, acrylic, paper