Don't hate the media, become the media. Jello Biafra
Khadija Cecile Niang
There are people who belong to the sea
ART INTERVIEW | 2026
Khadija Cecile Niang
Lightbox Exhibition:
There are people who belong to the sea
10 October - 03 January 2027
Image © Ollie Babajide Tikare | Cassian Gray
Oct, 8, 2026
Khadija Cecile Niang presents a new body of work exploring the sea as a space where labour and leisure coexist. Drawing from a visit to N'Gor Island in Senegal, where she witnessed surfers and fishermen sharing fishing boats to reach the waves, Niang is curious about how coastal communities’ relationship to the sea shapes their understanding of work, time, and rest.
Niang has selected works from The Ingram Collection to sit alongside her own, engaging with the history of painting the sea in Britain and interrogating how a life shaped by the sea might, in turn, shape one's relationship to the world.
Hi Khadija, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me ahead of your new exhibition, There are people who belong to the sea, opening at Lightbox Gallery. When opening a new exhibition, do nerves ever set in?
Yes, for sure! I feel particularly nervous for this show. The last time I showed a new body of work was for my degree show, and this time it feels quite different.
Whilst in education, you have crits and tutorials, so you have a few chances to get a sense check and feedback on your work before showing it to a wider audience. I am really excited for this work to be out in the world, but alongside it comes the nerves and feeling vulnerable showing works which haven’t been seen by many people.
What’s that feeling like seeing your work in a new space for the first time?
It feels like a relief. I find the part between when the work leaves the studio and installing it the hardest. I find it hard to visualise what my works will look like in a new space compared to in my studio, so it feels so nice to be able to see them all together and start the process of finding their homes in this new space.
And congratulations on winning The Ingram Prize 2025. What has it meant to you to get this type of recognition?
Thank you! It has meant a lot; it came right at the time when my post-grad wobbliness was starting to set in, so it’s been so great to have something to work towards. Finding your feet after having such structure is hard, and so having this was also really important for my confidence and motivation during the adjustment period to being back in “the real world”.
Can you take me through the inspiration behind There are people who belong to the sea?
As I've been making this work, I realized that actually, in a way, it's a continuation of my degree show at the Slade. I started thinking about this dynamic between labour and leisure when I was in Senegal. A lot of the local surfers come from a fishing families and having the same heritage, I was curious if that’s what subconsciously brought to surfing, but I wondered whether there comes a shift in how you relate to the sea when it’s been your livelihood compared to for me I usually approach it as a place to relax and play.
I wanted to unpack these ideas a bit more because I didn't have time at the Slade to pull at that thread. I took having this show as have an opportunity to speak to people and see how those conversations can influence my work.
I've felt that there is a very special relationship to time and space that happens when your livelihood or your day-to-day is so in relation to the elements. There's a sense of presence and understanding of the natural world that you have, and I think it's interesting to think about how that carries through in life whether you're by the sea or not.
I was also reading Looking to Sea: What Coastal Art Tells Us About Modern Britain by Lily Le Brun when I was working on the ideas for this show. I was curious to see how my work and my interpretations of these ways of seeing the world through the sea would communicate with these pre-existing works in the Ingram Collection, some of which don't really have that much context about why they were made or what the intention was. I was interested to see how they would converse in a room together.
Excuse the pun, what drew you to the sea?
In terms of my personal life, I have been going to the sea for as long as I can remember. Both my parents love the sea, so they've been taking me and my sisters there since we were very young.
In terms of my practice, painting the sea really started in my first week at the Slade. Before we started, I remember someone in the year above giving us advice that in our first year we should lean into painting what we want and not to overthink too much. I was quite an overthinker, and part of why I wanted to come back into education after a few years out of it was to fall in love with the painting process again.
Just before I started at the Slade, I'd gone on a surf trip with some friends in Portugal, and the images from this trip were something that I couldn't get out of my mind. So I decided to paint stills from videos I had taken on this trip, and it kind of opened things up for me really.
On one strand, I was quite interested in the rich history of surfing that I discovered was in Senegal, where my family is from, and how I didn't really know that much about it. But a big part of my being drawn to the sea in my paintings was also using it as a tool—using the way I felt in the sea when I'm swimming, when I'm surfing, almost as an inspiration for the way that I wanted to feel when I'm painting. In terms of really feeling in my body and being quite present with the medium.
Has having such a powerful, familial connection to the coast shaped the way you wanted to bring this exhibition to life?
Yes, massively. A big part of this show has been connecting with family members that I don't really know that well and having the chance to ask them questions and understand a bit more about that side of the family. Most of the imagery that came into the show was based on the conversations that I had with these relatives.
I grew up in Liverpool, and the sea is something I can describe. Perhaps it’s due to Liverpool being the centre of the Transatlantic Slave Trade; this connection with this historic past remains strong even now that I am more landlocked. But there is an invisible pull of the sea that’s magic and emotional at times. What does the sea mean to you? For some context, I saw this play a few years ago that really connected my thoughts of the sea and my African heritage.
I've always felt quite an emotional pull to the sea, but I think that's kind of inevitable because of the way that I've been raised. My mum and my dad, as I mentioned before, always brought me to the sea at any opportunity and valued that time spent in water. But it was never really just about the practicalities of being in the sea. The way my mum in particular speaks about the sea is very spiritual.
I've never really felt a separation from that. I've always felt a sense of belonging no matter what body of water I'm in because it feels so physical how much it calms my nervous nervous system. I've always really leaned into that feeling, and this really felt quite reiterated for me while I was doing these interviews.
The title of the show came from something one of my relatives said: that there are people who belong to the sea. He speaks about how our ancestors are in the sea and that they protect us. Even though my parents and direct relatives aren't currently fishers, it's always been ingrained in me that we have a special connection to the sea because of this ancestry.
Was it always your plan to conduct interviews for this exhibition?
Yes, it was always the plan. I think I've realized that I have a way of working in which I like to start off by looking at something I'm thinking about in a more internal way. I think my degree show was that exploration of my own emotional, physical, historical relationship to the sea.
From there, I like opening up these personal experiences with conversations with others. I'm quite a social person and I think that comes through in my work. I think my practice is best when it's in communion or communication with others, whether that is directly in the work or just in private. I really value hearing other people's voices, and I like that my practice can be a way of creating new connections and bonds and feeling a sense of belonging, sometimes even with strangers.
What did you take from your interviewees' connection with the sea?
I think quite a mixture of things. I spoke to people who are close to me and some who were strangers. Overall, because of the nature of doing a call out asking people about their relationship to the sea, if they wanted to have a conversation with me, most of the people have a pretty positive relationship to the sea, whether that is through their leisure and joy or through work.
I guess maybe the difference I felt was more with my relatives versus friends. It felt like to some people there was just an undeniable, unwavering sense of what their relationship is with the sea, whilst others are maybe still figuring it out or building on it and understanding it in maybe a less spiritual way than others. But I think all of the conversations were really interesting, and I feel like I'm somewhere in the middle of this.
Of the pieces part of this exhibition, is there one painting that holds extra special significance to you?
That's hard to say because it depends on the day...I think the beauty of having all of these works together now is that I've had a little bit of space from them since making them, but I think that they bring something out in each other when they are in relation to one another. I am quite curious to see how that feeling will change once I've had conversations with people coming to see the show.
Alongside your exhibition, there are other works on display from The Ingram Collection. How did you select these pieces? How did they fit into the wider themes of your exhibition?
I chose the pieces quite intuitively. In a more obvious way, my main filter was seeking images that were related to the sea in some way, whether that's to do with fishing or industrialization or people by the coast.
It's been really interesting installing them, I chose most of the works before I'd made some of my newer works in the show. It's interesting to see some points of connection which I'm sure in some way might have subconsciously come from seeing the works in the collection. I am always amazed at just how there are so many ways of interpreting the sea. It's really nice to have my work in dialogue with the many other ways that people before me have chosen to interpret the sea.
What is the message you want to say with There are people who belong in the sea?
I don't necessarily think that I have a message for the show. I think I'm offering my experience and understanding, or interpretation of experiences of the sea, into the world. I hope to bring more conversations or for people to make their own connections and have maybe memories about the sea that come up for them.
Where did your passion for art come from?
I've always been quite a creative child. When I was at school, my two passions and subjects I enjoyed most were art and music, so it kind of felt like I had to choose between the two of them when I was deciding what to study at university.
I feel very lucky that despite both my parents not coming from an art background, they've always been extremely encouraging and supportive in enabling me to pursue my creative passions. I think really my passion comes from having that initial creativity being nurtured when it was first seen.
How much did your time at the Slade School help inform your approach to your art?
It informed me massively. I really am grateful for my time at the Slade because it ignited my ability to enjoy the process of art making. I think before that, a lot of the way that I made was completely focused on either the narrative I was trying to convey or the end thing I was trying to make, which meant that the process was at times unenjoyable along the way.
Aside from also gaining an amazing community of artists and friends that I can now turn to when I feel lost and confused, the thing I'm most grateful for is that I can now enjoy what I think is the most important part of making art at times, which is being present in the act of making.
Does having such a rich, cross-cultural heritage inform your art?
Yeah, absolutely. That's undeniable for me. A lot of the work that I've made has stemmed from my experiences or my heritage, whether that is me trying to understand myself better. But also, I think having moved around and been lucky enough to be a part of so many cultures, one of the main things I feel like I've got from that experience has been a sense of being curious and nosy, which I feel like is one of my greatest assets at times as an artist, having curiosity.
Are you flexible with your work? Do you prefer to stick to an idea/plan, or do you allow yourself to be taken in different creative directions once you’re working on a piece?
Yeah, I'm really flexible. I think that's another thing that I kind of rebooted in terms of the way that I made before I was at the Slade. Before, I was extremely rigid in planning what I was going to do, and I've kind of let go of that, which is still at times really difficult because I think my impulse is to want to maintain a certain sense of control.
But I always think that the most interesting or exciting things that can happen in work happen when something goes wrong or is unplanned or just happens. So I try to create parameters in order for that to be able to happen, which is easier some days rather than others and can be stressful when you have to make a body of work and you don't really know what they're all gonna look like. But it also is really exciting because a lot of the time I find that what I intuitively make is always so much more interesting and exciting than what I could have potentially planned.
"...I think I've always struggled with how much I love the sea and maybe wanting people to take that away from it..."
Who are some of the artists who have influenced you?
For me, I think one of the main artists that has influenced me is Phoebe Boswell. She's been an amazing mentor for me, and particularly at times when I want to work in a more collaborative way, I've been really inspired, having been a participant in her projects, by how kind and generous she is working with other people.
In terms of visual influences, I've been influenced by the works of the Senegalese artists Souleymane Keita and Germaine Anta Gueye.. I'm also really inspired by Noah Davis and Geoffrey Holder. I love the way that Frank Bowling uses colour, last year I saw a show by Chioma Ebinama at Maureen Paley that I was also really inspired by.
I don't often look to classic Western painters, but someone who has always been an inspiration for me, (probably from my childhood in Norway), is Edvard Munch.
And finally, what would you hope guests who come to see There are people who belong to the sea?
It's a bit complicated, because I think I've always struggled with how much I love the sea and maybe wanting people to take that away from it, but I know it's a lot more complicated than that. I think it's always very interesting when the work is open enough that some people might see something that reflects something really happy, but others maybe something more somber.
I hope either way that people come away with a sense of curiosity and openness, and maybe interrogate if they have complicated feelings about the sea more than if they hadn't before.