UMAN

Uman is a Somali-born, self-taught, contemporary painter and sculptor based in upstate New York, U.S.A., where she resides in Roseboom a tiny rural town with a population of about 650 people. Its open sky, sprawling hills, valleys, and ponds (as well as her many farm animals) have become recurring themes and characters in her work.

Uman’s practice, which spans painting, works on paper, murals, sculpture, and glass, is about colour that is felt and content that is experienced. Under the influence of memories, dreams, and change, her visual language is intuitive, multilayered, adaptable, and free; neither exclusively abstract nor metaphorical, it proliferates in the indeterminate and transcendent.

Visceral and poetic, and rooted in specific autobiographical experience – a childhood and adolescence spent in Somalia and Kenya, as well as a subsequent migration to Europe and the United States – Uman’s work also provokes a complex set of questions concerning background, memory, identity, belonging and gender, ultimately suggesting that such constructions remain fluid and constantly in flux. In 2024 Hauser & Wirth described her work as follows (‘At Work in the Garden. Uman in conversation with Matthew Higgs and Annatina Miescher about displacement, community and letting art speak for itself’):

Uman’s visual vocabulary reflects her life and expansive cross-cultural experiences. An intuitive artist, she draws from memories of her East African childhood, a rigorous education in traditional calligraphy and a fascination with kaleidoscopic color and design. Her work contemplates both the physical and the spiritual, intertwining abstraction, figuration, meditative patterning and a reverence for the natural world.

Uman was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, but left the country with her family at age nine (in order to escape the Somali Civil War), settling with extended relatives in Mombasa, Kenya. She would often visit her eldest aunt in Turkana, northern Kenya, one of the oldest landscapes on the planet. Its distinctive geography, lodged in her memory, eventually became a persistent theme in her art.

Apart from the obvious horrors of the Civil War, Uman’s family also had to deal with other pressing concerns, ultimately prompting their move, as well as their eventual decision to send Uman to live with an aunt in Denmark (where she relocated aged thirteen). In a 2024 conversation with Annatina Miescher (Swiss-born, naturalised American psychiatrist and retired clinical assistant professor at New York University) and Matthew Higgs (director and chief curator of White Columns, New York City, where in 2015 he organised Uman’s debut solo exhibition), Uman said (‘At Work in the Garden. Uman in conversation with Matthew Higgs and Annatina Miescher about displacement, community and letting art speak for itself’, Hauser & Wirth, 2024):

I’ve always been trans. I always knew that was a part of me. It was complicated. People could tell that I was different. I needed to leave Kenya because my parents didn’t know how to protect me, and they felt that the best thing for me was to move to Europe. I was in a society where I could get killed or beaten to death. It happened a few times that I was attacked by kids. My mom didn’t want me to leave, but it was something that my parents had to concede.

The move to Denmark turned out to be a step in the right direction for Uman, who not only found herself in a more forgiving and safe environment but also discovered art through, yet another, relative. In an interview with fellow artist Chris Martin (‘Uman with Chris Martin’, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2023), Uman remembered how she ‘had an aunt in Vienna married to an Austrian guy and there was a cluster of her Somali and Kenyan friends who were more liberal, more open. I was sixteen and she showed me art—she had a big influence on my life.’

Spurred on by her discovery of art, Uman moved to Paris to study fashion, but around 2000 she relocated to New York City with aspirations to be a full-time visual artist: ‘I was in my twenties. And I just had a one way ticket, you know. I was young and I just came to New York and I had no plan whatsoever. Just go there, something great will happen. It was like a voice inside of me. […] It was a big struggle for many years. To find my place. But I also made good friends who helped me.’ (‘Uman with Chris Martin’, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2023).

Once properly settled in New York, Uman’s career, as a self-taught artist, eventually took off after she joined the ‘137 Artists Collective’ and participated in her first group exhibitions, starting around 2012.

Uman’s first solo show, Uman, was at White Columns, New York, in 2015. Gallerist Nicola Vassell dedicated her booth to Uman’s work at the Independent Art Fair, New York, in May 2022, and in December 2023, Uman’s work was featured at Art Basel Miami, Miami Beach, Florida.

Uman’s first solo museum exhibition, Uman: After all the things…, was shown at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, U.S.A., in 2025-2026.

Uman has also shown her work in the following solo exhibitions: Uman: 35 Years a Black Sheep, Louis B. James, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2015-2016); I will sit here and wait for you, Fierman New York, NY, U.S.A. (2019); I hope this finds you well, Fierman, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2021); Goodnight, sweetdreams, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2022); Uman: I want everything now, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2023); Darling Sweetie, Sweetie Darling, Hauser & Wirth, London (2024); and A Fantastic Woman, Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, Switzerland (2025).

To this could be added the following group exhibitions: Ideal Pole, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2012); A house to die in, ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012); Art Brut, The 137 Artists Collective, Biancasforni Studio, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2015); I Saw the Earth Like a Broken Egg, Christian Berst Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2015); Who Cares?, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2016); Ungewohnte Nähe, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2017); Sanctuary, with For-Site Foundation at Fort Mason Chapel, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. (2017); The Universe II, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2018); RED TELEPHONE, curated by Nora Griffin, Fierman, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2020); FUTUREFUTURE, Hair and Nails, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. (2020); L'afrique Fantôme, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2020); Sanctuary, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada (2020); Flower Power, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2020); Nothing (but Flowers), Karma, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2020); Cat’s Cradle, in collaboration with Fierman and Situations, Kristen Lorello, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2021); Face-to-Face, on the occasion of Traversées Africaines, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2021); The Human Scale, Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.A. (2021); The Earth, That Is Sufficient, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2021); Heliotropic, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2021); Controlled Chaos, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2022); Face & Figure, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2022); PERSON(A), Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2022); Moods & Memories, Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens (2022); Supra Nature, Anne De Villepoix, Paris (2023); MELENCOLIA, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland (2023); Abstraction (re)creation – 20 under 40, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2024); The Selves, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2024); The Abstract Future, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, California. U.S.A. (2025) and 12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once within a Time, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A. (2025).