Mani Kambo
Former Somerset House Studios resident

Mani Kambo

Multidisciplinary artist working in moving image, print and textile.

Somerset House Studios
New Wing

Mani Kambo is a multidisciplinary Artist, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She explores the inner spirit by drawing on her own personal totemic symbols. Influenced by her upbringing in a Sikh household filled with superstition, prayer and religious ceremony. Textile, fabric dying and printmaking is rooted in Kambos family history within the caste system. She focuses on objects, routines and rituals distilled both from the everyday and mythology.

PASSAGE

Her work records movement and documents performative actions – the hand that creates the action, fire that reveals, water which is the purifier and eyes that perceive: through the exploration of totemic objects and symbols. Through layering and editing images together she collages narratives and weaves dreamscapes. These visuals are repeated throughout her work like markers linking to notions of spirituality and belief in reincarnation.

Mani Kambo Ascend 1, 2018, cyanotype, 30x42cm.jpg

Mani Kambo - Ascend 1, 2018, cyanotype, 30x42cm
Ascend 1, 2018, cyanotype, 30x42cm


Mani be looking into the ways we heal ourselves with plants and their aid in helping us to breathe and live, food, shelter, and medicine. We used to navigate the lands by looking to the skies and following stars but the intoxication of city life has taken over and detached us from the earth we live on.