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BIO

Ronald Abdou Ngum Kiloh (b. 1999) is a Cameroonian-born multidisciplinary practitioner whose work explores impermanent states of existence and the potential for things to become otherwise. His practice emerges through acts of transposition, allowing each idea to take the form it needs.

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He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town in 2023. Shaped by overlapping English and French postcolonial legacies, as well as Christian, Islamic, and African Traditional belief systems, his work explores how structures of identity, knowledge, and power move, shift, and are re-read.

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Abdou treats objects, forms, and experiences as living configurations: capable of shifting, transforming, and taking on different states without any single state becoming definitive. Process, iteration, and relational exchange guide this unfolding, while hybrid and interactive forms allow engagement to become part of the work itself. Rather than seeking a fixed resolution, his practice is guided by curiosity, transposition, and the possibility held within a form.
 

Awards

2026

  • Winner of Kartina Mira International Competition for Young Artists.

2023

  • Peace Symposium (Art for Peace), Japan Institute Scholarship Award.

2022

  • Cecil and Thelma Skotnes Scholarship Award, Michaelis and the Centre for Curating The Archive.

Exhibitions

2026

  • Intercontinental Biennal, Group Exhibition, Panama.

  • Kartina Mira Group Exhibition, International Youth Festival, Ekaterinburg.

  • Spier Light Art Exhibition, Group Exhibition, Cape Town.

  • ​Picture of the World, Kartina Mira Winners Group Exhibition, Samara.

  • Notes on Sculpture, WorldArt Group Exhibition, Cape Town.

  • Exhibit B, Peter Clarke Art Center Group Exhibition, Cape Town.

  • Untold Expressions, Cape Town Central Library Group Exhibition, Cape Town.

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2025

  • In The Making, Emerging Artists Group Exhibition, by the City of Cape Town.

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2024

  • Portraits and Landscapes, Group Exhibition, Youngblood Africa, Cape Town.

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2023

  • A Home Group Exhibition, Curated by and for Michaelis students, Cape Town.

  • Work and Play, Group Exhibition, Youngblood Africa, Cape Town.

  • Peace Symposium Group Exhibition (an Art for Peace Commission), Japan Institute, Cape Town.

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2019

  • Art for Change Event; Kill Fear, Group Exhibition, Yaounde, Cameroon.

ARTIST STATEMENT

An interest in impermanent states of existence and the potential for things to become otherwise underlies my practice. I am drawn to forms, materials, images, and meanings that are not exhausted by their present state, but hold the possibility of becoming something else. Rather than seeking fixed outcomes, I allow ideas to develop through movement, transposition, transformation, and encounter, letting each work take the form it needs.

Shaped by layered cultural, religious, and linguistic histories—including English and French postcolonial legacies and Christian, Islamic, and African Traditional belief systems—my work reflects ongoing questions about how identity, knowledge, and belonging are carried, displaced, and re-read across changing contexts. These experiences inform my interest in multiplicity, hybridity, and the coexistence of different or seemingly contradictory states, while resisting the need for any one state to become definitive.

Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, film, design, and other forms, I approach making as an experimental and iterative process. Forms move between two- and three-dimensional registers, materials are asked to behave beyond expectation, and objects may be designed to accommodate different configurations or modes of engagement. I am interested in interaction, ritual, and temporality as ways of keeping a work active, allowing meaning to emerge through participation, duration, transformation, and exchange. The work is therefore not only what it becomes, but also what it remains capable of becoming.

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