Alternative Futures and Resilient Communities: Josèfa Ntjam’s Exhibition at Fotografiska Tallinn

This November, Fotografiska Tallinn opens a solo exhibition by French multimedia artist Josèfa Ntjam, inviting visitors on a multilayered sensory journey. Weaving together stories of historical movements that have empowered the oppressed, the exhibition opens a door toward possible futures – a fluid and poetic presentation filled with hybrid forms, diverse media, and endless dialogues. 

Opening on November 7, Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s) brings together sculptures, video installations, and photomontages. Ntjam’s work draws on the history and mythologies of the African diaspora, independence movements, and anti-colonial and liberatory ideas. Her practice intertwines historical events and narratives that reveal how depictions of resistance and liberation evolve over time, continuously shifting in meaning. 

Ntjam’s works create alternative ecosystems, where political history, science, philosophy, and African mythologies intersect. Her multilayered practice also references quantum physics, molecular biology, and science fiction. Informed by her engagement with science and biology, recurring motifs of water and nature – such as plankton, fungal networks, and the depths of the sea – symbolize invisible systems of resistance and strategies for survival. 

A central figure in Ntjam’s visual world is Mami Wata, the West and Central African water deity who, in her works, becomes a hybrid entity. Ntjam merges sculptural forms of Mami Wata with microscopic images of plankton, using AI to generate new mythologies. Mami Wata embodies transformation and multiplicity and serves as a metaphor for how definitions and identities are shaped – and often constrained – by dominant power structures. 

Ntjam approaches history as a living entity – a memory of the oppressed that must be preserved, embodied, and passed on as an act of resistance to the legacy of colonial power. For the artist, liberation is a continuous transformation reaching toward the future, while remaining rooted in past struggles for freedom. The exhibition breaks away from linear conceptions of history and emphasizes that true freedom lies in fluidity and adaptability, beyond rigid hierarchies and systems of power. 

Ntjam also reflects on how to speak of anger and indignation toward a history that has sought – and continues to seek – to silence acts of resistance and obscure the path to freedom. 

“Ntjam’s exhibition offers both a visual and intellectual experience,” says Maarja Loorents, Co-Founder and Head of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Tallinn. “It brings together history, art, science, and imagination in a way that feels deeply resonant, prompting us to ask: Who does history belong to, and which stories do we choose to remember?” 

Josèfa Ntjam (b. 1992) is a rising voice in contemporary art. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (2024) and Art Basel Paris (2022), and will visit Tallinn for the exhibition opening. The opening tour of the exhibition will take place at Fotografiska on November 6 at 6 PM, with the artist herself present. The exhibition will remain open through spring 2026. 

Alongside Ntjam’s exhibition, Fotografiska Tallinn also presents the large-scale group show SPACE – A Visual Journey and photographer Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez’s powerful and intimate exhibition To Be Born and to Give Birth.