Mani Kambo

7 Dec 2024-2 Jun 2025

Overview

Mani Kambo is a multidisciplinary Newcastle-based artist who explores the inner spirit by drawing on her own personal totemic symbols, influenced by her upbringing in a Sikh household filled with superstition, prayer, and religious ceremony. 

Textile, fabric dying, and printmaking is rooted in Kambo’s family history within the caste system. She focuses on objects, routines and rituals distilled textile, fabric dyeing, and printmaking is rooted in Mani Kambo’s family history within the caste system. She focuses on objects, routines and rituals distilled both from the everyday and mythology, her work recording movement and documenting performative actions: the hand that creates, fire that reveals, water which purifies and eyes that perceive. Through layering and editing images together she collages narratives and weaves dreamscapes. These visuals are repeated throughout her work like markers linking to notions of spirituality and belief in reincarnation. 

Kambo will present a major body of new work for Baltic’s Level 2 Gallery and in addition to this commission she will take part in a residency at Baltic from January 2024. The residency has been conceived through Baltic’s Artist Development Programme and will provide Kambo with expert support and mentoring. Throughout the residency Kambo will have access to Baltic’s expansive facilities as well as curatorial and technical input, aiding her practice and support the development of new work for this exhibition.