Passage

“We carry the presence of people we’ve never met but who live on through us through names, practices and photographs.”

– Atong Atem, 2025

Through portrait photography, Melbourne-based South Sudanese artist Atong Atem uses her body as a canvas, adorned with textiles, paint, and symbolic objects. Her work explores inherited traditions and ancestral memories, societal norms around gender and race, and both emotional and physical scars. Richly layered and vibrant, Atem’s photographs connect beauty and design with a lineage of African studio photography, feminist aesthetics, and diasporic narratives.

This is Atem’s first major solo exhibition in Australia, presenting new and existing photographic works by a leading artist in her generation of contemporary photography. Her art tells a story of a culture that persists amid displacement, war and colonialism. She traces a transcontinental and intergenerational journey, echoing the often-coerced movements of people – telling a story of resilience that endures. Noting the neglect of East African contributions in mainstream art history, Atem centres her community and herself in her work, honouring Dinka Bor myths and culture. Photography, historically a colonial instrument, becomes a tool for reclaiming identity and agency. Through this lens, Atem explores how identity is performed both in daily life and before the camera, creating spaces where history, memory, and imagination intertwine.

THE ARTIST

Atong Atem is an Ethiopian-born, South Sudanese artist living in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been exhibited widely across Australia, including at the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Portrait Gallery and the Immigration Museum. Internationally her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern (London) Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam), Fotografiska Shanghai, Stadtgalerie (Germany), Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and the National Maritime Museum (Amsterdam) (Het Scheepvaartmuseum). In 2025, Atem exhibited at the Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France in partnership with PHOTO Australia, where she was selected as one of six nominees for the Prix de La Photo Madame Figaro-Arles. She was the recipient of the inaugural La Prairie Art Award from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2022 and the National Gallery of Victoria and MECCA M-Power scholarship in 2017. Atong has developed numerous collaborations with the fashion world including Romance was Born, Social Studio and Harper’s Bazaar. Her work is held in public and private collections across Australia and the world.

THE PUBLICATION

A fully illustrated new monograph produced in partnership with Thames & Hudson Australia will be published to coincide with the exhibition.

The book includes essays by Osei Bonsu, Jorge M. Pérez Senior Curator, International Art, Africa and Diaspora, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Clothilde Morette, Artistic Director, Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, France; reflections from Atem Yaak Atem and Anna Abul Malual Aguer; an interview with the artist and Natasha Bullock, Senior Curator, Photography, NGV, Melbourne, Australia and Anna Honan, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, NGV, Melbourne, Australia and an afterword by Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, Melbourne, Australia.