Joana Choumali

Joana Choumali (born 1974, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire) is an Ivorian visual artist whose multidisciplinary photographic practice explores memory, migration, identity, and the diversity of African cultures. Working across conceptual photography, mixed media, documentary photography, and hand embroidery, Choumali examines portraiture, daily life, and emotional recovery through staged imagery, meditative stitching, and narrative observation.  Choumali studied graphic arts in Casablanca, Morocco, and worked as an art director in advertising before committing fully to her photography practice. Her work often engages portraiture, marketplaces, mental health, oral culture, and contemporary African experience, using conceptual portraits, documentary photography, textile intervention, and embroidery directly on photographs to consider memory, healing, and social transformation.  Her work has been exhibited at Harvard Art Museums, Gallery 1957, the Venice Biennale, Sperone Westwater, and Beurs van Berlage. She has received the Prix Pictet, the CAP Prize, the LensCulture Emerging Photographer Award, the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund, and the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography. Joana Choumali lives and works in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.