Expansive Survey of Painter Uman Opens at CCS Bard June 2026

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY (March 23, 2026)—This June, the Hessel Museum of Art at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) presents a solo exhibition exploring over two decades of creative practice by the painter Uman, marking the pathbreaking artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s prolific painting practice from the intimate portraits she made in the 2000s to the commanding images she creates today, including two new murals developed for the exhibition. On view June 27 to November 29, 2026, Uman: In Between is curated by Lauren Cornell, Artistic Director of the Hessel Museum of Art.

Uman’s art has often been framed through biography: her path as an immigrant and arrival in post-millennium New York as a self-taught artist. In Between shifts the focus toward her motifs and technique, revealing how she transforms a wide range of influences, including memories from her East African childhood, the natural world, and portraiture, into a distinct vocabulary of signs, symbols, and chromatic textures. Through this evolving visual language, Uman creates ambitious compositions that position her as one of the most vital painters working today.

“It has been deeply meaningful to work with an artist as prolific and inventive as Uman at such a pivotal moment in her career,” said curator and Artistic Director of the Hessel Museum of Art Lauren Cornell. “This project reflects CCS Bard’s commitment to artistic experimentation and to presenting ambitious bodies of work with depth and original scholarship.”

The exhibition charts Uman’s artistic practice from the 2010s to the present, beginning with works from the artist’s early years in New York. At the center of the opening gallery is a handmade collapsible kiosk from which Uman first presented her paintings. Painted over and collaged, the structure reflects the resourcefulness and independence that continue to shape her practice. Nearby, a selection of early collages and paintings highlights motifs that have endured throughout her work. Together, these early works foreground a material inventiveness that runs throughout Uman’s practice. Surfaces assembled from canvas, paper, cardboard, and wood reflect her habit of refashioning found materials often salvaged from the streets of New York’s garment district and Chelsea neighborhood. Across these varied supports, Uman develops dynamic geometries of squares, points, curves, splotches, grids, stains, and letterforms that lay the groundwork for a sensorial visual alphabet connecting works throughout the exhibition. This gallery also introduces themes such as landscapes, animals, and portraiture that Uman continues to revisit.

In Between goes on to highlight the early 2020s as a period of particularly prolific creative output. Working in Roseboom, New York, during the COVID-19 pandemic intensified Uman’s focus on material and gestural experimentation, resulting in the creation of more than 160 visually complex works. During this period, she expanded her use of oil sticks, allowing for a more controlled dynamism in the rendering of her symbols and biotic shapes, while also making a decisive shift toward working at a much larger scale. The exhibition highlights this transformative moment in her practice, including her technique of painting with her fingers and her use of color to express story, memory, and geography.

Additional highlights include new and previously unseen works, as well as two murals created specifically for the exhibition that build on Uman’s earlier work in the public realm.

The exhibition concludes with a dedicated focus on Uman’s creative process, bringing together notebook sketches and drawings created alongside the development of her paintings. These materials provide intimate insight into her practice across nearly two decades and reveal recurring motifs that evolve throughout her work, including the circle, a form that has long fascinated the artist and continues to appear in many variations across her paintings.

Also on View
In Between is part of a broader spotlight on artists pushing the possibilities of abstraction and color, and will be complemented by the concurrent presentations of a major retrospective examining the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900-1982) as a pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist, alongside the first survey of Navajo/Diné weaver Marilou Schultz.

About Uman
Uman is a multimedia artist who lives and works in upstate New York. She creates lavishly detailed microcosms replete with color, gesture, geometry and evocations of the natural world. Reflecting her experiences growing up across continents and cultures, her vibrant visual vocabulary draws upon memories of East African childhood, rigorous education in traditional Arabic calligraphy, deep engagement with dreams and fascination with kaleidoscopic color. With nods to self-portraiture and fictional topographies, Uman’s works fluidly inhabit a liminal space between abstraction, figuration, and meditative patterning.

Solo exhibitions include I Love You After Everything, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2025); Uman: After all the things…, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut (2025); Uman: A Fantastic Woman, Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland (2025); Darling sweetie, sweetie darling, Hauser and Wirth, London (2024); Uman: I want everything now, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2023); Goodnight, sweetdreams, Eleni Koroneou, Athens (2022); I hope this finds you well, Fierman, New York (2021); I will sit here and wait for you, Fierman, New York (2019) and Uman, White Columns, New York (2015). Group presentations include the traveling exhibition Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, currently on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (2026); 12th SITE SANTA FE, Curated by Cecilia Alemani, New Mexico (2025); The Abstract Future, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2025); The Selves, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2024); Abstraction, (re)creation, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2024); Supra Nature, Galerie Anne De Villepoix, Paris, France (2023); Sanctuary, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2020) and A house to die in, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012).

Exhibition Catalogue
A catalogue published by Monacelli Press will be released in tandem with the opening of Uman: In Between. Featured writers are Lauren Cornell; Omar Farah, Curatorial Assistant at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Amber Musser, Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center; and Roberta Smith, writer and former co-chief art critic of The New York Times.

Exhibition Organization and Credits
Uman: In Between is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Cornell.

Major support for Uman: In Between is provided by the Bukhman Foundation; the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; Hauser & Wirth; Jill and Peter Kraus; Nicola Vassell Gallery; Speyer Family Collection, New York; and Alexander S. C. Rower & Elan Gentry.

Exhibitions at CCS Bard and the Hessel Museum of Art are made possible with generous support from Lonti Ebers, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the Leadership and Curator’s Councils, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

About the Hessel Museum of Art  
CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art advances experimentation and innovation in contemporary art through its dynamic exhibitions and programs. Located on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the Hessel organizes and presents group exhibitions and thematic surveys, monographic presentations, traveling exhibitions, and student-curated shows that are free and open to the public. The museum’s program draws inspiration from its unparalleled collection of contemporary art, which features the Marieluise Hessel Collection at its core and comprises more than 4,000 objects collected contemporaneously from the 1960s through the present day.  

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College  
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making.  

MEDIA CONTACTS: 
Resnicow and Associates 
Juliet Sorce / Chelsea Beroza / Emma Gold / Onnie Woods
Tel: +1 212-671-5158 / 5165 / 5186 / 5170
Email: [email protected]   
 

This event was last updated on 03-23-2026

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