Passage: The Art of Atong Atem

“We carry the presence of people we’ve never met but who live on through us through names, practices and photographs.” – Atong Atem, 2025 Through portrait photography, Melbourne-based South Sudanese artist Atong Atem uses her body as a canvas, adorned with textiles, paint, and symbolic objects. Her work explores inherited traditions and ancestral memories, societal norms around gender and race, and both emotional and physical scars. Richly layered and vibrant, Atem’s photographs connect beauty and design with a lineage of African studio photography, feminist aesthetics, and diasporic narratives. This is Atem’s first major solo exhibition in Australia, presenting new and existing photographic works by a leading artist in her generation of contemporary photography. Her art tells a story of a culture that persists amid displacement, war and colonialism. She traces a transcontinental and intergenerational journey, echoing the often-coerced movements of people – telling a story of resilience that ensures. Noting the neglect of East African contributions in mainstream art history, Atem centres her community and herself in her work, honouring Dinka Bor myths and culture. Photography, historically a colonial instrument, becomes a tool for reclaiming identity and agency. Through this lens, Atem explores how identity is performed both in daily life and before the camera, creating spaces where history, memory, and imagination intertwine.