Elijah Ndoumbe is a multidisciplinary artist and moving image director. They work towards embodied methods of artistic connection, care and radical imagination. Their image-making relationships extend to building close communities between the USA, South Africa, West Africa, and the extended black and trans diaspora. While their work is rooted in the image, they see lens-based work as a practice of care that is capable of producing a radical-care-politic in community, in collaboration, collective production and intentional practice. Their short documentary, Prayers For Sweet Waters, following Trans-identifying sex workers in Cape Town during the pandemic, premiered at the Academy-qualifying HIFF, won an award at NewFest, and screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Ndoumbe was a 2021 artist in residence at Black Rock Senegal and exhibited work in the 2022 DAK’ART Biennale as part of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock 40 Show.
Elijah Ndoumbe