Nyemer

  My current body of work is deeply fueled by the rage and heartbreak I feel due to the December 2013 Nuer genocide and the ongoing slaughter of Nuer civilians by the government of South Sudan. As an abstract expressionist, I use my art as a way to channel this pain and resistance. I strive to capture the profound trauma and complex identities of my people, whose stories are often reduced to mere numbers. The world hears about 100,000 dead, but I see faces, hear names, and remember the lives of people like my grandmother's neighbor, killed simply for being Nuer, not as a victim numbered in a statistic. Through my work, I explore themes of isolation, grief, and survival in the wake of genocide. I feel the isolation my people endure, as their voices are often silenced or ignored by the outside world. This is compounded by the oppressive ethnocratic systems that have kept my people from living freely like others. My art is a response to the suffocating silence imposed on us by both the government and the international community, offering a visual representation of the resistance, resilience, and longing for freedom. The pain of loss, the weight of grief, and the haunting memory of violence are the foundation of my work. I aim to give form to what is often unspoken—what can’t be quantified in numbers. Through abstraction, I try to communicate the emotional and psychological aftermath of genocide and the enduring fight for justice. Each brushstroke, each fragmented shape represents the complexity of identity, the lives lost, and the hope that my people will one day be heard and free. My art is a story—a story of those who are forgotten, erased, and reduced to statistics. It is a personal and collective narrative of survival, resistance, and the will to keep our identities alive in the face of overwhelming loss. This is not just art; it is an act of remembering, an act of defiance, and an act of bearing witness.