Louise Mandumbwa's paintings celebrate the beauty and tenacity of everyday people- creating intimate snapshots through which ideas of individual identity, and the human condition are explored. She strives to humanize her subjects, people who all too often are represented as a sum of their tragedies and victims of circumstances. Having grown up in a developing nation, Mandumbwa often found herself in the company of resilient driven personalities, qualities that now inform the ways in which she presents the subjects in my portraits.
Louise utilizes the nature of her preferred surface to further facilitate the narrative nature of her work. The works rendered on wood panel were completed with sections of the wood grain exposed; She believes just as each resulting work contained and demonstrated specificity of culture and singular story, the wood grain varying from one piece to the next demonstrated the same. Her more recent works exploring universal belong in the context of a foreigner are rendered on plexiglass removing any separation between the work and space it inhabits. Both technique and surface are intended deliver an emotive work in which one might recognize facets of themselves in- regardless of their background: an individual that dares hope.
Solo Exhibition Record
2019
Your Name is Not Your Own (You are Not Your Own), EACC Gallery, Forrest City, AR
2018
On Being and Becoming, Hearne Fine Art Gallery, Little Rock, AR
2017
On Being and Becoming, Hearne Fine Art Gallery, Little Rock, AR
Group Exhibition Record
2019
ICONS Ideals of Black Masculinity, Xavier University Art Gallery, New Orleans, LA
PRIZM Art Fair, Miami, FL
CHQ VACI Gallery, Chautauqua, NY
2018
Daughters of the Diaspora, Hot Springs Cultural Alliance, Hot Springs, AR (Curated by Garbo Hearne)
2017
PRIZM Art Fair, concurrent to Miami Art Week, Miami, FL
XXI Prime, Hearne Fine Art, Little Rock, AR