Joana Choumali, born in 1974, is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. She studied graphic arts in Casablanca (Morocco) and worked as an artistic direc- tor in an advertising agency before embarking on a career as a photographer. She works mainly on conceptual portraiture, mixed media and documentary photography. Much of her work focuses on what she learns about the countless cultures around her.
In her latest works, Joana Choumali embroiders directly on the images completing the act of creating the photographic image with a slow and meditative gesture. In 2014, she won the Cap Prize Award and the Emerging Photographer LensCulture Award 2014. In 2016, she received the Magnum Emergency Grant Foundation and the Fourthwall Books Award in South Africa. In 2017, she exhibited her series “Translation” and “Adorn” at the Ivory Coast Pavilion during the 57th Venice International Biennale. On November 13, 2019, she became the first African winner of the Prix Pictet for her series “Ça va aller” on the theme of this cycle, “Hope”. His work has been published in the international press: CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, El Pais, Le Monde, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Harper Bazaar Art, The Financial Times etc. Her book HAABRE, was published and edited in Jo- hannesburg in 2016. Her book “Ça va aller” was published in 2022 by Nazraeli press, USA
She was named a 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in photography by the Peabody Museum of Archeology & Ethnology, at Harvard University in the United States.
Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum (MET) in New York, the High Museum, Contemporary Art in Atlanta, the Harvard Art Museum in Boston In the United States ; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London ; the Prix Pictet Collection in Switzerland ; the Carla and Pieter Schulting Collection in Pais Bottom ; the Collection of the Fondation H in Paris and Antananarivo ; the MACAAL Museum of Contemporary African Art in Al Maaden in Marrakech ; the Museum of Photography in St Louis Senegal ; Harry David Art Collection in Greece ; the Leridon Collection, in Paris and the Tiroche Deleon Collection, in Israel.