Passage: The Art of Atong Atem at NGV Australia

For more than a decade, Atong Atem has used her own body as both subject and canvas, building richly layered portraits from textiles, paint, costume and symbolic objects. Passage: The Art of Atong Atem, opens at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in October, bringing together more than 65 works, including new commissions and series shown in full for the first time.

Born in Ethiopia to South Sudanese parents, Naarm / Melbourne-based Atem draws on Dinka Bor culture, African studio photography, feminist aesthetics and diasporic storytelling in her work. Her photographs move between history, imagination and lived experience, exploring race, gender, colonialism and the cultural traditions that endure across generations.

The exhibition includes the Australian premiere of Scars and Constellations (2024), a series commissioned by Amsterdam’s National Maritime Museum that considers Dinka Bor scarification alongside histories of colonial trade, navigation and conflict. Atem also debuts As Above, a large-scale commission made for the NGV that weaves together Dinka dance, traditional beading, Catholic iconography and astronomical imagery.

Elsewhere, Banksia (2021), a photographic series shot at Melbourne's Immigration Museum, examines the African, African American and Caribbean convicts and free settlers who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. Surat (2022) – shown in its entirety for the first time – re-creates portraits of relatives Atem knew only through photographs. Together, the works treat photography as both a record of the past and a way of reclaiming it.

Passage: The Art of Atong Atem runs from October 30, 2026, to June 14, 2027. Entry is free.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of National Gallery of Victoria.