Emma Prempeh: Belonging In-Between

Tiwani Contemporary Lagos starts its 2025 exhibition programme with the solo show, Emma Prempeh: Belonging In-Between. This suite of paintings continues the latest body of works which finds Prempeh pictorially considering landscape as physical and emotionally charged sites, drawing together the matrilineal experiences and memories of her grandmother and mother Carmen, of whom the latter features very prominently.

The series documents Carmen’s return to St. Vincent last year with the artist, 40 years after migrating to London. It was Prempeh’s first time in St. Vincent, visiting the homes and spaces that her Mother lived in or were a feature of her childhood and early teens, and for the artist the process of witnessing her Mother revisiting these locations, enacted a reckoning with the present state of those sites and their changes over the years, to the stories her Mother shared with her whilst growing up.

Prempeh’s pursuit of understanding what home or belonging means as a diasporan subject, whose current experience is defined in transit – traveling between East and West Africa (Uganda and Ghana), the Caribbean (St Vincent and the Grenadines) and the United Kingdom (London), exposes Prempeh’s growing consciousness around the historical, environmental and geopolitical narratives underpinning her observations and travels, revealing greater nuance, and complexity.

Her paintings depicting people, interiors, places, and still and animal life from past and recent memories and events, emphasize and represent the passing of time and the instability of memory. Belonging In-Between features vignettes and sentiments for the places and people that mean a lot to her.

tiwani.co.uk