A Visual Feast
by Gretchen Lytle
Introduction
Immerse yourself in Uman’s world of color and motion when you enter the exhibition at the Hessel. Step into her display booth, where she used to sell her work. Strong colors, moving shapes, layered collage, bold lines . . . it’s alive. When Uman came to New York City as an artist in 2000, she sold her work on the street—paintings along with painted chairs and other found objects, and also sold clothing and bags at the Union Square Greenmarket.
Road to Becoming an Artist
Uman is an outsider in many ways. She was never schooled in art. While she loved to draw as a child, she was not encouraged to do so. Raised in a traditional Muslim society in Mogadishu, Somalia, she was educated in madrassas and schooled in Arabic calligraphy. At the age of 9 she and her family escaped the civil war, emigrating to Kenya, where they lived with and visited relatives in different areas. Just four years later, her family sent her out of Africa to live with relatives in Aarhus, Denmark. Then at the age of 20 she moved to New York City. She had made her own path through different countries and cultures, across urban and rural landscapes, to make art in her own way.
Exploring
An incredibly prolific artist, she explores with line, shape, pattern, color, and texture in unconventional ways with a range of materials. She may paint with oil sticks and oil or acrylic, using her fingers or soft or stiff brushes. Look what happens texturally.
Range of Scale
She works on her own, and she collaborates with others. She paints pieces that might hang by a picture hook—and she will paint temporary works on large walls as well as create permanent murals. Be sure to go see these two images as one huge wall installation in the Hessel.
Compositions
There is a lot going on in Uman’s compositions. Lively movement characterizes her paintings, whether a flowering tree, recollections of hallucinations, or creatures in a story, I don’t know. Her colors are bold and striking, as she makes them pop against each other.
Overlapping Worlds
Clearly, Uman is an explorer, both of the larger world and her own vision. She incorporates her interior world in her paintings, which also reflect what she has taken in of the landscapes and cultures in which she has lived and that she continues to absorb. Currently, she works in her Albany studio and lives about an hour to the west. Her work continues to be inventive, exciting, lively, and uplifting. For anyone who loves color, pattern, and texture, Uman’s art could expand one’s own dream world.
