BRIGHT GENERATION: NAMSA LEUBA

Positioned between the duality of her Swiss and Guinean heritage, photographer Namsa Leuba’s work envisions ‘the representation of African identity through the Western imagination.’

FRANKLINTILL_VISUAL ESSAY_NAMSA LEUBA — Damien, NGL Series, Namsa Leuba

Leuba’s dynamic, often surreal imagery explores her interest in traditional customs and plays with notions of reality by portraying cultural signs, symbols and rituals through her particular lens. Props, colours and gestures become the tools to question ‘the relationship between fact and fiction, action and representation, and the sacred and the profane.’

Her glitched re-interpretation of traditional Ndebele patterns explores these notions in an unconventional manner which culminates in a series of vivid and vibrant surrealist forms. Similarly, Leuba imagines different narratives for her constructed characters in the Next Generation Lagos series, portraying them through the lens of an array of colourful and psychedelic filters which push the limits between fiction and reality.