Afro-Surrealist Figuration

Fatou Ridgird

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Fatou Ridgird (b.1999, NJ) lives in New York and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2022 majoring in Fine Art. As a multidisciplinary artist, she explores the spiritualistic notion that everything is connected- challenging herself to make the seemingly mundane tangible. Through her Afro-Surrealist lens, she works across photography, installation, digital art, and painting to further the understanding of interconnectedness within her practice. At the heart of her work lies an exploration of the ever-evolving landscape of self-identity. Fatou works with photographs she’s taken that capture a “thing power,” which is a term coined by political theorist Jane Bennett who theorizes that all matter is pulsating with life. Bennett refers to inanimate objects with the term “thing power” lending significance to objects and how they can be alluring to others, which frequently goes beyond practical reasoning and is sometimes spiritual (Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things). With these photographs taken, Fatou makes “digital collages,” a term she coined to describe a collection of images derived from photography and splicing them into one composition all within the digital landscape. Going another step forward, she will paint a composition present within the digital collage constructed. By experimenting with this process Fatou engages in the storytelling of the multifaceted nature of the African diaspora. As an Afro-surrealist, this pattern of art-making embraces symbolism, identity, and digital culture through intensive layering and recalling of events. Her work has been shown in The Newark Museum of Art (group show, 2023), SLA Art Space (solo show, 2023), and the SVA Chelsea Gallery (group show, 2021-2022). Notable Awards include the School of Visual Arts Rhodes Family Award for Artistic Excellence (2022) and the Congressional Art Competition for Best Painting (2017). Fatou has been a recipient of the Newark Arts Renewal Grant (2022) and her work has been published in the special revival issue of HEADS Magazine by U.D.L.I Editions/NADA Maimi (2022) and published in Brownstone Cowboys Magazine New York (2024). She is signed to a talent agency known as No Agency New York since summer 2021.