Dr. Nafeesah Allen is an African-American artist based in Mozambique. Her work explores the intersection of imagined identity and material culture through mixed media photography, reinterpreting portraiture in the Global South.
Her canvas-based works layer original photographs taken across South America and Africa over the past 20 years with textured elements that add dimensionality. This assemblage technique extends her inquiry as an ethnographic researcher: How much of an image reflects the subject’s true essence, and how much is shaped by the observer? By incorporating embellishments like beads, dried flowers, coins, and stones, she challenges photography’s claim to objectivity, creating pieces that feel both authentic and artificial.
Allen draws inspiration from both past and present artists, including Ricardo Rangel, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, and Naita Ussene, whose work captures the depth and complexity of quotidian life in their own national contexts. While her mixed-media approach aligns with artists like Marion Boehm and Bisa Butler, her practice is distinct in that she transforms her own original photographs into a new medium rather than reinterpreting archival imagery.
Inspired by her ancestors’ Great Migration journey, she honors the tradition of African-American visual storytelling while forging new narratives across generations and geographies. As a third-generation photographer, Allen follows in the footsteps of her grandfather, Louis Allen Sr., a reconnaissance photographer in the U.S. Army and Navy turned portrait photographer. His passion for capturing ephemeral moments in Black life profoundly influences her current works on display.
Her first solo exhibition, “Pieces of Me,” on display at CCMA - Mozambique-German Cultural Centre (Goethe) in March-April 2025, was an immersive visual and auditory experience meant to connect the viewer with the highest self of the person captured in the original photograph. In the continuum from human to ancestor to God, there is a shared belief across many religions and cosmologies that a human is more than what meets the eye. This exhibition endeavored to visualize the soul and ask viewers to interrogate the value of human life and its inherent connection to divinity. The original photos were taken between 2005 and 2024 by Allen in places like Angola, Ethiopia, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Puerto Rico, and Suriname.
She completed a second solo show at the Nedbank Business Lounge in Mozambique in August, as well as a group exhibition at the Galeria no Porto in Maputo and an art residency at Arts, Letters & Numbers in NY, USA.
The pieces produced in the U.S. will be on view at the "Windows at 127" in Montclair, NJ (along Bloomfield Avenue, adjacent to the Montclarion at Bay Street Office at 127 Bloomfield Avenue) from November 2 - December 5.
One, "Madonna and Child in Catembe," will be in a juried show, "Transformed 2025," from October 31 to November 22 in Circle Gallery, 18 State Circle, Annapolis, MD 21401. All pieces are available for sale now and will be available for pick up as soon as the exhibitions are complete.
Limited commissions available through November 2025. Contact the artist.
(Note: The pieces are organic and may shed. Artist can set the pieces in epoxy upon request of the collector; otherwise, each piece comes with tacky glue for easy re-affixing.)
Her canvas-based works layer original photographs taken across South America and Africa over the past 20 years with textured elements that add dimensionality. This assemblage technique extends her inquiry as an ethnographic researcher: How much of an image reflects the subject’s true essence, and how much is shaped by the observer? By incorporating embellishments like beads, dried flowers, coins, and stones, she challenges photography’s claim to objectivity, creating pieces that feel both authentic and artificial.
Allen draws inspiration from both past and present artists, including Ricardo Rangel, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, and Naita Ussene, whose work captures the depth and complexity of quotidian life in their own national contexts. While her mixed-media approach aligns with artists like Marion Boehm and Bisa Butler, her practice is distinct in that she transforms her own original photographs into a new medium rather than reinterpreting archival imagery.
Inspired by her ancestors’ Great Migration journey, she honors the tradition of African-American visual storytelling while forging new narratives across generations and geographies. As a third-generation photographer, Allen follows in the footsteps of her grandfather, Louis Allen Sr., a reconnaissance photographer in the U.S. Army and Navy turned portrait photographer. His passion for capturing ephemeral moments in Black life profoundly influences her current works on display.
Her first solo exhibition, “Pieces of Me,” on display at CCMA - Mozambique-German Cultural Centre (Goethe) in March-April 2025, was an immersive visual and auditory experience meant to connect the viewer with the highest self of the person captured in the original photograph. In the continuum from human to ancestor to God, there is a shared belief across many religions and cosmologies that a human is more than what meets the eye. This exhibition endeavored to visualize the soul and ask viewers to interrogate the value of human life and its inherent connection to divinity. The original photos were taken between 2005 and 2024 by Allen in places like Angola, Ethiopia, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Puerto Rico, and Suriname.
She completed a second solo show at the Nedbank Business Lounge in Mozambique in August, as well as a group exhibition at the Galeria no Porto in Maputo and an art residency at Arts, Letters & Numbers in NY, USA.
The pieces produced in the U.S. will be on view at the "Windows at 127" in Montclair, NJ (along Bloomfield Avenue, adjacent to the Montclarion at Bay Street Office at 127 Bloomfield Avenue) from November 2 - December 5.
One, "Madonna and Child in Catembe," will be in a juried show, "Transformed 2025," from October 31 to November 22 in Circle Gallery, 18 State Circle, Annapolis, MD 21401. All pieces are available for sale now and will be available for pick up as soon as the exhibitions are complete.
Limited commissions available through November 2025. Contact the artist.
(Note: The pieces are organic and may shed. Artist can set the pieces in epoxy upon request of the collector; otherwise, each piece comes with tacky glue for easy re-affixing.)