Fireball Printing Award Winner
Nene Aïssatou Diallo’s (born 1996, Republic of Guinea, West Africa; lives Newark, NJ) work is centered around photography, video, textiles and collage. Diallo has a BA from the University of Richmond, VA and attended The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, New York. Diallo has exhibited nationally and had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson; Index Art Center, Gallery Aferro and Project for Empty Space, all Newark; and The Residency Project, Pasadena, CA. Diallo’s work has been featured by Format, the Monument Lab Bulletin, NPR, and RVA Magazine. Diallo is the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives Program Coordinator, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and co-director of LAND Collective, Newark.
Statement from the Artist:
Nene Aïssatou Diallo works through the tension and displacement that is inherent with immigration and to resist legacies of erasure. She preserves the memories and imaginations of home by working with images that reference those locations and family photo albums. The series “not at home” began after a first return to Guinea after 10 years in the United States. The ongoing series is made with newly created gelatin silver prints, reprinted negatives found in Guinea, scraps from her mother’s Guinean tailor in Newark and found imagery referencing Newark. Diallo’s collages are often made small-scale, enlarged through scanners and reprinted as photographs. Layering on the scanner, creating an image that includes these varying stories and homes, is Diallo’s way of merging identity using objects and materials as stand-ins.