Louise Mandumbwa: A world in the creases of my palms

From the inception of life, our hands have served as a guiding force. Touch is the very first sense a baby develops in the womb, yet we often overlook how vital our hands are to nearly everything we do. Through the tactile, Louise Mandumbwa brings a bit of her familial garden and archive to Long Gallery Harlem with _A world in the creases of my palms_. In this show Mandumbwa places the hands back at the forefront of the conversation, highlighting them as an essential tool for environmental interaction, communal bonding, preservation, and future building. As a daughter and granddaughter of intra-continental immigrants from Zambia, Angola, and the Congo, in addition to her experience as an immigrant herself in the U.S., Mandumbwa has always been interested in epistemologies that are often part of a diasporic experience. _A world in the creases of my palms_ weaves texts, figures, and urban recollections that have defined Mandumbwa’s practice across the cities she’s called home. Anchored by her signature botanical paintings and featuring poems written by the artist herself, this presentation is symbolically unified by portraits and imagery of hands belonging to Mandumbwa and her loved ones. Two new multi-canvas paintings, _A Sweet Thing/A Grafted Thing_, 2026 and _A Marvel_, 2026 are on view in the storefront and serve as the entry point to the rest of the show. Unlike many of Mandumbwa’s other works, rendered in greyscale, these two emerge in captivating shades of yellow and green. These colors reflect not only the vegetation but also other natural elements Mandumbwa has encountered during the course of her life. Beyond her literal portrayals of botanicals throughout this show, Mandumbwa uses the garden as a subtle metaphor for community and resilience. _A world in the creases of my palms_ reminds us of what bell hooks wrote about in her essay “homeplace”: a site of resistance; a safe place created through care, nurture, and hard work; a place where we can affirm and, in turn, heal one another. Given the richness of New York, and considering Harlem’s deep roots, _A world in the creases of my palms_ is a reminder that despite the current state of the world, there is still gardening and harvesting to be done.