“Namm Naa La” by Photographer Charlotte Yonga

In 2021, photographer Charlotte Yonga was invited to an artist residency program in Senegal with a theme of “love.” Spending a month with this phrase in thoughts, Yonga took an intuitive method to image-making, creating a young sequence of images documenting the individuals and land round her. Again in Europe, Yonga acquired a textual content from considered one of her topics: “Naam Na La.” The Wolof expression interprets to “I lengthy for you,” placing a chord for Yonga. “These phrases echoed with Love because it strikes me and as I had unconsciously needed to disclose it,” she explains. “Love skilled by way of its feeling of immensity and eternity as a lot as by way of its inconsistency, lack of and flaws. The Love that may also be uncertened, troubled or ambivalent, surrounded by oceanic views and decors metaphorizing hope, guarantees, fecundity and infinity.”

Charlotte Yonga lives and works in Barcelona, Spain, Paris, and France.

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