Mani Kambo
Residency: February 2026 – July 2026
Mani Kambo is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in textile, print and moving image, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She explores the inner spirit by drawing on her own personal totemic symbols, influenced by her upbringing in a household filled with superstition. Focuses on objects, routines and rituals distilled both from the everyday and mythology. Through layering and editing images together she collages narratives and weaves dreamscapes.
Recent exhibitions and screenings include Exeter Contemporary (2025), New Art Exchange (2025), Ax•is Mun•di, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2024-25), Harewood House Biennial: Create/Elevate (2024), Sudden Beams 2: Extraction, Platform Asia (2023) ‘Swimmers Limb’ Somerset House – Gallery 31 (2022), ‘Hinterlands’ Baltic (2022-23), ‘Jubilee’ V ane Gallery (2022) Womxn of Colour Art Award, Altitude, 198 Contemporary and Learning (2019). Kambo was recently an Arts Foundation Futures shortlisted Visual Artist (2025).
“Sacred symbols guide and connect us as humans with those who have been, are here, and will be. We expand and shrink back through cycles of birth, life, and death, tethered together as part of a larger cosmos. In my work, paths are cyclical in nature, symbolically connecting the human soul and its bond to the universe.
Black and white oscillate as opposing forces: good and evil, light and dark, creation and destruction, being and non-being. Rooted in a upbringing of superstition and protection, I explore origin myths and cosmological understanding. My use of embroidery and textile relates to the caste system in India, where generations of my family have been tailors, fabric printmakers, and dyers.
The rhythmic processes of knotting, tying, bending, and moving fabric in and out connect my artworks to meditative practices, a pathway toward transcendence through making. Through repetitive motion, the act of creating becomes a physical manifestation of how gesture and action hold power. This energy embeds itself within each artwork.”
Instagram: @manikambo
Website: www.manikambo.co.uk