Atong Atem: Reclaiming Heritage Through Art

The National Gallery of Victoria presents Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, a landmark exhibition celebrating the work of an artist whose vibrant photographic portraits explore identity, memory, migration and the enduring power of cultural heritage.

Art has an extraordinary ability to preserve what history sometimes overlooks. Through photography, colour, costume and symbolism, South Sudanese artist Atong Atem has developed a visual language that brings together personal identity, ancestral memory and the stories of communities across generations.

This October, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) opens Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, the artist’s first major solo exhibition, offering an expansive look at a decade of artistic practice.

Opening on 30 October 2026 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in Melbourne, the exhibition brings together more than 65 works, including previously unseen and specially commissioned pieces. It represents the most comprehensive presentation of Atem’s work to date.

Atong Atem Red dust sticks to you 2022. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased, Victoria Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2022 © Atong Atem

The body as a canvas of identity

Known for her vivid photographic self-portraits, Atem places herself at the centre of her visual narratives, transforming her appearance through textiles, paint, costume and symbolic objects.

Her photographs move beyond conventional portraiture. They become explorations of race, gender, colonialism, cultural identity and the ways in which history shapes how individuals see themselves and are seen by others.

Drawing on the beauty and resilience of her Dinka Bor heritage, alongside the experiences of Melbourne’s African diaspora, Atem uses photography as a medium of celebration and reclamation.

Her work creates a dialogue between history and imagination, allowing cultural memory to exist not simply as something inherited, but as something continually interpreted and reimagined.

Visitors in Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, on
display 30 October 2026 – 14 June 2027 at The
Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne.
Photo: Tom Ross

A journey across continents and generations

Born in Ethiopia to South Sudanese parents, Atem and her family made their home in Australia in 1997. Her personal experience of migration informs an exhibition that considers movement, displacement, belonging and the complex relationship between place and identity.

Rather than presenting migration solely as a geographical journey, Passage explores the cultural and emotional connections that survive across continents and generations.

Among the exhibition’s highlights is Scars and Constellations (2024), presented in Australia for the first time. Commissioned by the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, the series explores the relationship between the sea, sky and histories of colonial trade and navigation.

The work incorporates scarification, a Dinka Bor cultural practice associated with identity, ritual and healing, while engaging with the complex histories of conflict.

Another significant presentation is As Above, a world-premiere commission created specifically for the NGV. This large-scale wall installation weaves together Dinka dance, traditional beading and Catholic iconography, drawing on the symbolism of constellations and the ways in which people position themselves within larger cultural, historical and cosmic systems.

Installation view of Atong Atem’s As Above 2026
in Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, on display 30
October 2026 – 14 June 2027 at The Ian Potter
Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne.
Photo: Tom Ross

Reclaiming the stories within history

The exhibition also presents Banksia (2021), a photographic series created at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum. Through this body of work, Atem turns her attention to African, African American and Caribbean convicts and free settlers who arrived with the First Fleet.

The series challenges audiences to reconsider the foundations of Australian identity, creating space for histories that have often received insufficient recognition.

In Surat (2022), presented in its entirety for the first time, Atem explores family photographs and the mythology of portraiture. Recreating images of relatives she knows only through photographs, she becomes a bridge between memory, ancestry and generations.

The work draws on a Dinka Bor cultural understanding in which names are inherited to honour ancestors, allowing portraiture to become an expression of familial continuity across time and space.

An artist shaping contemporary cultural conversations

Atem’s work has attracted international recognition, with exhibitions at institutions including Tate Modern in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery in Australia and Fotografiska Shanghai.

Her practice also extends into fashion and collaborative creative projects, reflecting the increasingly interconnected relationship between contemporary art, photography and visual culture.

Reflecting on the ideas underpinning her practice, Atem describes the body as a politicised landscape through which heritage, identity and place can be documented, archived and reimagined.

It is this relationship between the intimate and the universal that gives her work its resonance. Although deeply rooted in her own cultural history, her images invite broader conversations about belonging, representation and the stories people carry with them.

Atong Atem Our neighbour was a witch 2022 from the Surat series 2022. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne © Atong Atem

A passage worth experiencing

With more than 65 works spanning a decade of artistic development, Passage: The Art of Atong Atem offers audiences an opportunity to encounter an artist whose work challenges conventional understandings of portraiture and cultural identity.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new illustrated monograph produced in partnership with Thames & Hudson Australia, featuring contributions from international curators, writers and cultural thinkers.

The NGV will also host public programmes and performances, including an artist conversation and book launch with Atem, a zine-making workshop and a performance by the South Sudanese Bor United Women’s Choir.

Ultimately, Passage is more than a survey of photographic works. It is an exploration of the ways in which identity travels, memory survives and heritage finds new forms of expression.

Through her lens, Atong Atem reminds us that the past is never entirely behind us. It lives in our bodies, our names, our traditions and the stories we choose to carry forward.