Treasured
The exhibition presents a suite of paintings and drawings in oil and charcoal, revolving around one singular endeavour — to extract stories from Kayo Mpoyi's family — specifically — her mother's photo album. By returning to the photographs, to what cannot be heard but only seen, the artist explores how memories can be broken apart, reshaped, and reassembled. Each work moves in a frontier between clarity and recognition, toward abstraction and emotional gravity. Between the finished and the unfinished.
The exhibition’s title, Treasured, functions as a prayer or an incantation. Mpoyi describes how working with the photographic archive and all the memories it carries evoke a fundamental sense of love. Love for those depicted, for their stories, as well as for the direct and actual act of painting. It is an attempt to reconcile with what has been, to heal the fractures and hold together what risks falling apart. The title in itself becomes almost a series of affirmations, manifestations — I am loved, we are loved. Within this mantra, between vulnerability and strength, the paintings and the act of painting become a space for restoration and care. Together, in succession, the works form a visual weave of layers and memories. They attempt to stitch together parts of a narrative into a whole, while also accepting that some threads remain loose, and certain traces have faded.
Kayo Mpoyi was born in 1986 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden. She is a published author of the books Kitoko, An Exercise in Revolution, and Mai Betyder Vatten. Mpoyi holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2025). She has been featured in several institutional group exhibitions, including Stockholm Cosmologies, Liljevalchs, 2025; The Great Unrest, Västernorrland Triennial, 2025; the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, 2025; The Family – For Better or Worse, Sven-Harry’s Art Museum, 2026. Kayo Mpoyi was selected for the Grafikens Hus residency in 2025 and presented a solo exhibition comprising of prints and a large installation.
Älskad // Treasured is Kayo Mpoyi's first solo exhibition at Saskia Neuman Gallery
