Uman’s practice is interdisciplinary and ever-evolving. Comprising painting, drawing, murals, mosaic, sculpture, and glass, her work is rooted in the tangibility of color and the transportive power of images. Shaped by memories, dreams, and the constant flux of life around her, Uman’s visual language is intuitive and multilayered, adaptable and free; it is neither exclusively abstract nor metaphorical — it grows out of what is indeterminate and into the transcendent. Her many inspirations range broadly, from her childhood in East Africa and diasporic experiences in Europe and the US to a love for textiles and transcontinental fashion. Her subject matter evokes the flamboyant fabrics worn by women in Somali bazaars, the slanted flourishes of Arabic calligraphy taught in madrasas, and the vast countryside of Kenya and Upstate New York.
On view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, through May 10, 2026, Uman: After all the things … includes new and recent paintings, works on paper, video, and a sculpture. Created with oil, acrylic, spray paint, oil stick, and even sometimes incorporating elements of collage and sewing as well, Uman’s compositions dance with animated hues and phantasmagoric patterns. Working on many pieces simultaneously, Uman builds her pictorial arrangements — many of which reference 19th-century French painting, surrealism, and visionary abstraction alongside the natural world — with energetic mark-making methods, using dry brushes and even her fingers and palms, resulting in surface treatments that disrupt the conventional distinction between paintings and drawing. Fusing art history with autobiography and spirituality with reality, Uman’s work pursues the metaphorical through a close attention to, and reverence for, the natural world.
Uman: After all the things … is accompanied by the artist’s first museum publication, co-published by Gregory R. Miller & Co., featuring an essay by the curator, images of the work on view, and installation images.
For more information, visit thealdrich.org.
Uman: After all the things … is organized by Amy Smith-Stewart, Diana Bowes Chief Curator.
