Goodman Gallery Cape Town presents Those We Remember or Are Yet to Meet, a new solo exhibition by Kenyan artist Chemu Ng’ok, bringing together nine recent paintings created in her Nairobi studio.
The exhibition centres on six large-scale acrylic and oil paintings, including a diptych spanning more than three metres, alongside two gestural abstractions that extend ideas first explored in Ng’ok’s 2023 London exhibition, The Longing. Across the exhibition, figures emerge through luminous layers of colour and loosely defined forms, reflecting on community, family and the enduring presence of ancestors.
Working between memory and lived experience, Ng’ok explores how relationships, emotions and inherited histories shape our understanding of ourselves and others. Her paintings suggest communities that are both familiar and imagined, where individuals remain distinct yet connected within a shared psychological and emotional landscape.
Created alongside a studio journal, the works draw on the artist’s interest in transforming fleeting thoughts and feelings into physical form. Rather than documenting specific people or places, the paintings evoke traces of memory, longing and belonging, giving visual presence to experiences that are often difficult to articulate.
Colour plays a central role throughout the exhibition. Vibrant yellows, pinks and rich tonal contrasts animate the compositions, creating scenes that balance intimacy with celebration. While the figures retain an element of ambiguity, the paintings invite viewers to consider ideas of ancestry, collective memory and the ways communities continue to evolve across generations.
Born in Nairobi in 1989, Chemu Ng’ok works across painting and drawing to investigate the social, political and psychological dimensions of human relationships. Her work has been presented internationally, with recent solo exhibitions in London, Milan, Los Angeles and Miami, and group exhibitions including the New Museum Triennial in New York, ICA Miami and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Belgium.
