Ludovic Nkoth

For the Cameroon-born Ludovic Nkoth (b. 1994), displacement and domesticity occupy a familiar place at the margins of the stories he tells. With gyrating and meandering brushstrokes, Nkoth’s practice in figurative painting broaches the ongoing negotiation of transatlantic migration–a direct rumination on diasporic histories and on his own expatriation to the US at the age of 13. Nkoth explores the formation and fragmentation of identity through depictions of subjects at rest, subjects in thought, leisure, in motion or fragments of subjects just going about their daily lives. Oftentimes their figuration resembles a freeze frame of a cinematic moment. 

Throughout his work, his figures participate in the fictions and lived experiences that comprise his own identity synthesis; each muddled expression and porous boundary imbues his paintings with the tender incandescence of a distant memory. The navigation of both belonging alongside alienation in African and American spaces underscores much of Nkoth’s work, and informs the future-building of kinship, solidarity, and self-determination that is central to his practice. Ludovic Nkoth lives and works in New York City. 

Nkoth completed his BFA at the University of South Carolina, and holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Maison La Roche, Paris, France; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, USA; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, USA; Simões de Assis, São Paulo, Brazil; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; Massimo de Carlo, London, UK; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA; Ross + Kramer, New York, USA; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA; and Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy. Nkoth’s work is held in the collection of the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.