Chuma Adam

Chuma Adam (b. 2001) is an emerging artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

She is a multidisciplinary artist exploring painting, printmaking, textiles,  sculpture, and drawing. Her bodies of work are primarily informed by a  philosopher she greatly admires, Édouard Glissant, and his theory on opacity derived from his acclaimed book, Poetics of Relation.  

Chuma’s works challenge themes of visibility, or lack thereof, as she dances  around the complex tropes of Blackness and self-actualization in the realms of  her Black identity. Chuma takes into great consideration her research which is  led by prolific and pan-African writers, thinkers, and philosophers. Chuma  mainly works through these thoughts, emotions, and conceptual processes  through the abstraction of the intangible complexities of navigating one’s self.  In trying to disassemble the complexities of her Blackness and womanhood, Chuma introduces texture to her paintings by mixing sand and soil from her  mother’s home into her earth-toned paintings and through repetitive mark  making which functions as a form of documentation of her cosmic quest. Chuma does this in an attempt to excavate a multiplex of complex feelings, and  ideologies surrounding Blackness and womanhood while paying homage to the  genesis of African art. Chuma maintains and contains these intense feelings  with her emotive, and sometimes controlled brushstrokes within these familiar  and organic shapes, creating an immersive and introspective viewing experience. 

Chuma has completed and graduated with a Honours degree in Fine Arts from  the University of the Witwatersrand (2024) and was shortlisted for the WITS  Young Artist Award (2022, 2023).