Everlyn Nicodemus - Without History

“If you are denied a history, then you have to write it,” says Everlyn Nicodemus. This ethos underpins Without History, the artist’s first solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery, presented in Cape Town in partnership with Richard Saltoun Gallery, and a rare presentation of her work on the African continent since her early exhibitions in Tanzania in the 1980s. Bringing together works from the late 20th century, the exhibition foregrounds a practice that has long moved between painting, research and writing. Shaped by personal experience of post-traumatic stress disorder and grief, as well as sustained research into African art in relation to human suffering and societal responsibility, Nicodemus’ work is driven by an insistence on making visible what dominant histories have neglected, excluded or refused to name.

A deeply interdisciplinary practitioner, Nicodemus has moved through overlapping intellectual and professional phases. She studied social anthropology, later working across research, writing, teaching and caregiving contexts, while continuing to make art since the 1980s. Rather than emerging from a singular trajectory, her practice developed in parallel with these pursuits over decades. Only relatively recently has she returned to working as a full-time artist. Across her paintings, essays and archival research, she has contributed to a wider effort by African artists and intellectuals to write themselves into history on their own terms.

The exhibition brings together key bodies of work produced while Nicodemus was living in Sweden, France and Belgium, before settling in Scotland. These include works from her Woman in the World cycle, developed through conversations with women in Denmark, Tanzania and India, alongside paintings from her multi-panel Wedding series, executed in Antwerp. Together, they trace a practice deeply engaged with memory, trauma, gender, spirituality and survival, while revealing a formal and conceptual range across geographies.