A Lineage of Home is a collage series that explores a history of Black life in Pittsburgh. Each of the seven pieces focuses on a specific place, idea, or moment of impact for Black Pittsburghers, from the city’s deep jazz legacy, to the impact of urban renewal and deindustrialization, to present day battles against gentrification. It’s a story of people, place, memory, and identity, and of making life in the midst of ever evolving circumstances. Created for the exhibition Another First Impression in Cincinnati, OH, curated by Asa Featherstone III.
Part collage series and part installation, Flight Plans draws on folklore, archives, documentary, and afro-futurist influences to meditate on flight as freedom. In the collage series Njie used found photos and documentary photos she’s made to build landscapes that form a runway back through time and across space. n the installation she places the collages in the context of living room and kitchen settings, representing historic sites of storytelling in Black homes and families. Created for a solo show at Carlow University Art Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA.
What do we take, and what is left behind when we leave home? With audio and visual collage, this installation takes visitors inside the collective memory of a fictional family that is leaving their home. Grappling with issues of gentrification, migration, memory, intergenerational relationships, and Black interior life, the two-room installation ponders how making home is part of how we make ourselves. Installation created for the group show, making home here, at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA, curated by Sean Beauford and Sylvia Rhor Samaniego.
Photobook and installation chronicling the century long history of Njie’s family in Pittsburgh, set against the physical, political, and cultural landscape of the region itself. Njie used handwritten text, documentary photos she made, and archival family photos to narrate a walk through the city, and accordingly a walk through a history through a personal lens. Created through grant funding in partnership with Silver Eye Center for Photography, and exhibited at the second Radial Survey biennial in Pittsburgh, PA.
Collage series that explores the long-simmering systematic injustices that exploded at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the possibilities for a better future that emerged in that era. The collages stage scenes that mirror the experience of moving through an imagined American city. The journey connects to the history of racism, capitalism, and individualism at the core of this country, while also pointing to legacies of agency, community, and solidarity. Created for the group show, Seeking Truth, at the Brew House Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA.
Photo essay exploring the past, present, and future for Black residents of Western Pennsylvania through a focus on life near the Ohio River, along PA Route 65. Njie interviewed residents and made environmental portraits of them, as well as landscape photos of their surrounding areas. The essay was commissioned by Belt Magazine for the Good River: Stories of the Ohio collaborative journalism project. The essay was also featured in the anthology, Black In the Midwest, curated by Terrion L. Williamson.
Public art project consisting of four large-scale public art installations, and a digital archive exploring a resident-centered history of Pittsburgh’s landmark historically Black neighborhood. Njie collected close to 50 oral history interviews, collected photos, made new photos, conducted archival research, and collaborated with community members to execute the public facing storytelling project. The commission was sponsored by Shiftworks: Community and Public Arts (formerly the Office of Public Art) and Neighborhood Allies in Pittsburgh, PA.
Landscapes and environmental portraits made to explore everyday life experienced by Black residents in the Pittsburgh region. In pairing images of people and place, Njie worked to insert images of Black life into the context of landscapes that have historically erased Black narratives. Exhibition created for Njie’s solo show as the 2018 Emerging Artist of the Year at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
Photos and videos made as part of the documentary project about the experiences and perspectives of Black women and girls in Pittsburgh. Njie made street portraits and environmental portraits of family, friends, and strangers alike, and also conducted brief interviews with them. The project also included a five-part micro-documentary series featuring Black women narrating their lives and learnings in the city. First created for a solo show/residency at Boom Concepts in Pittsburgh, PA.
