RIDGEFIELD, CONN.- The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is presenting Uman’s first institutional solo exhibition, After all the things …, where she debuts a new body of work that includes paintings, works on paper, video, and sculpture, all of which span the entirety of the Museum’s first floor galleries.
Uman’s practice is interdisciplinary and ever-evolving. Comprising painting, drawing, murals, mosaic, sculpture, and glass, her work is rooted in the tangibility of color and the transportive power of images. Shaped by memories, dreams, and the constant flux of life around her, Uman’s visual language is intuitive and multilayered, adaptable and free; it is neither exclusively abstract nor metaphorical—it grows out of what is indeterminate and into the transcendent. Uman’s inspirations range from her childhood in East Africa and diasporic experiences in Europe and the US, to a love for textiles and transcontinental fashion. Her subject matter evokes the flamboyant fabrics worn by women in the Somali bazaars, the slanted flourishes of Arabic calligraphy taught in the madrasas, and the vast countryside of Kenya and Upstate New York.
Created with oil, acrylic, spray paint, oil stick, and even sometimes incorporating elements of collage and sewing as well, Uman’s compositions dance with animated hues and phantasmagoric patterns. She favors solid and bold colors—reds, yellows, greens, and blues—that she uses to create spirals, grids, and pendants, all-seeing eyes, circles and stars, interspersed with whimsical creatures and native botany. Working on many pieces simultaneously, Uman builds her pictorial arrangements many of which reference nineteenth-century French painting, surrealism, and visionary abstraction alongside the natural world—with energetic mark making methods, using dry brushes and even her fingers and palms, resulting in surface treatments that disrupt the conventional distinction between paintings and drawing. Fusing art history with autobiography and spirituality with reality, Uman’s work pursues the metaphorical through a close attention to, and reverence for, the natural world.
In 2025 and 2026, the artist will be the subject of two significant debut museum exhibitions in the region: Uman: After all the things …, an exhibition of new work at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, followed by a survey at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College. A public program related to both exhibitions will be presented at the Hessel in 2026.
A publication, co-published by Gregory R. Miller & Co., will accompany the exhibition, featuring an essay by the curator, images of the works on view, and installation images.
Born in Somalia, Uman was raised in Kenya before migrating to Denmark as a teenager and later to New York in her early adulthood. Reflecting her experiences growing up across continents and cultures, her vibrant visual vocabulary draws upon memories of her East African childhood, rigorous education in traditional Arabic calligraphy, deep engagement with dreams, and fascination with kaleidoscopic color. In 2010, she relocated to Upstate New York, where she currently lives and works.
Uman has had solo exhibitions at Nicola Vassell, New York; Hauser & Wirth, London and Zurich; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens; Fierman, New York; Anne De Villepoix, Paris; and White Columns, New York. She has been featured in group exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada; For-Site Foundation at Fort Mason Chapel, San Francisco; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Karma, New York; and Ramiken Crucible, New York. In 2022, she was the recipient of the inaugural grant for The Cube at TRIADIC’s FORMAT Festival in Bentonville, AR. This year, her work will be exhibited at the 12th SITE SANTA FE International.
Uman: After all the things … is organized by Amy Smith-Stewart, Diana Bowes Chief Curator.
