The Mozambique-Born Artist Changing What It Means to Be a Painter Cassi Namoda wants to make art more accessible.
-
Loading... - Solomon Afful
- 18 Aug 2022
- 77 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
“Some would say your late 20s are a little bit late these days to start a career as a painter, which is weird and unfortunate,” says Mozambique-born artist Cassi Namoda, 33. After studying cinematography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and working for fashion designer Maryam Nassir Zadeh sourcing artisanal pieces from abroad for the store to sell — Namoda turned to painting from a very personal place. She was living in Los Angeles and yearning for home. “There’s a term in Portuguese, saudade, that’s a longing that can’t be replaced,” she says. A self-taught artist, she began showing paintings in a friend’s living room, then another friend’s bookshop, building a career through word of mouth. Now she is represented by Goodman Gallery and François Ghebaly.
Most recently, Namoda has been painting in Cape Town, South Africa, for a show there this summer. “Me choosing to physically be here is me saying that I want to engage with the people,” she says. “I don’t want to just send paintings over and be like, ‘All right, sell them.’” Later this year, she’ll spend time in Guatemala City working on a show involving ceramics, drawing, performance, and video art in an open floor plan for the experimental gallery Proyectos Ultravioleta. Her mode of traveling and painting from new places is intentional, a way to slow things down in an industry that can otherwise get “really commercial really fast.”
Namoda spoke with the Cut about her artistic journey, her inspirations, and why the light in East Hampton, where she’s based, is unlike that of anywhere else.
What in your early life put you on a path to be a painter?
It was my time spent observing nature in Kenya, where I lived when I was about 6. I was so in love with these animals that I so badly wanted to have pictures of them in my room. I would obsessively draw them whenever we would come back from safari, and that stuck with me. I was drawing consistently up until middle school. Read More...
