Amapiano Dance, 2022-23

Acrylic, oil and oil stick on canvas in artist's frame.

From an early age, Uman loved to draw and was fascinated by color, texture, and illustration. At age nine, her family fled the Somali Civil War and moved to Kenya, before relocating to Denmark when she was thirteen. Arriving in New York in the 2000s, she embraced an intuitive approach to painting by using saturated, bright hues, and she gained attention by 2015 for her paintings, sculptures, and assemblage works that showcase an original approach to layering multiple references—from art history, textiles, pop culture, and the natural world, including the starry skies in upstate New York, where she resides. Uman’s work is a fusion of the various cultures in which she has lived, with her lived experiences finding their way into recurring motifs. The abstract painting Amapiano Dance for instance, is an evocation of a well-known genre of South African dance music that is beloved by the artist.