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Somali Street Artist Attracts International Art Institutions with her Works

The deep blue color palette, punctuated by jewel-toned accents. (Nicola Vassell Gallery)
The deep blue color palette, punctuated by jewel-toned accents. (Nicola Vassell Gallery)
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Somali Street Artist Attracts International Art Institutions with her Works

The deep blue color palette, punctuated by jewel-toned accents. (Nicola Vassell Gallery)
The deep blue color palette, punctuated by jewel-toned accents. (Nicola Vassell Gallery)

Uman is not a fan of traveling. “I’m more of a fan of the destination. If I could just be beamed somewhere, I would be so happy,” the artist said, smiling behind sunglasses on a cloudy afternoon in London.

Migration and movement have played a major role in her life, and within her work. Born in Somalia in 1980, Uman and her family left their home there when she was nine years-old as a result of the Somali Civil War, later relocating to Denmark when she was 13, according to CNN.

In the 2000s, she moved to New York City, where she would sell her artwork on the streets in and around Union Square.

Since 2010, she’s been based upstate, away from the hustle and chaos. “I felt like the city was not very conducive to my creativity,” she told CNN in an interview. It’s her studio — “my fortress,” as she calls it —she feels most at home, happiest and freest.

This sense of freedom is conveyed in Uman’s latest work, currently on display at Hauser & Wirth London. Titled “Darling sweetie, sweetie darling,” the new exhibition is a kaleidoscopic world of color, drawing in influences across cultures, space and time.

Seven large-scale paintings adorn the walls of the gallery’s white cube layout, all exuberant explosions of color, calling back to Uman’s childhood.

“I grew up in a very condensed place. Most of my memories are of Kenya and (there), everything was just sensory. And I think that’s part of what comes out in my work,” said Uman, whose first solo exhibition opened in 2015 in New York.

Though distinct, the works are connected in various ways. Motifs recur, such layered geometric shapes, or the circular spirals reminiscent of the Arabic calligraphy Uman studied as a child. The paintings share a similar deep blue color palette, punctuated by jewel-toned accents. For Uman, these hues represent the expansive skies of her home and studio.

She emphasizes her approach to painting is guided solely by her intuition and instinct, and is a constant process of reapplying, reassessing and being guided by her mood on any given day.

“I never, ever plan it. I can only say it’s just a feeling, an emotional reaction, to my environment, reactions to my dreams and how I see the world, she said.

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Blood Tests Allow 30-year Estimates of Women's Cardio Risks, New Study Says

A woman jogs in a park in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France January 19, 2024. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
A woman jogs in a park in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France January 19, 2024. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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Blood Tests Allow 30-year Estimates of Women's Cardio Risks, New Study Says

A woman jogs in a park in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France January 19, 2024. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
A woman jogs in a park in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France January 19, 2024. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Women’s heart disease risks and their need to start taking preventive medications should be evaluated when they are in their 30s rather than well after menopause as is now the practice, said researchers who published a study on Saturday.

Presenting the findings at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting in London, they said the study showed for the first time that simple blood tests make it possible to estimate a woman’s risk of cardiovascular disease over the next three decades.

"This is good for patients first and foremost, but it is also important information for (manufacturers of) cholesterol lowering drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and lipoprotein(a)lowering drugs - the implications for therapy are broad," said study leader Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Reuters reported.

Current guidelines “suggest to physicians that women should generally not be considered for preventive therapies until their 60s and 70s. These new data... clearly demonstrate that our guidelines need to change,” Ridker said. “We must move beyond discussions of 5 or 10 year risk."

The 27,939 participants in the long-term Women’s Health Initiative study had blood tests between 1992 and 1995 for low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C or “bad cholesterol”), which are already a part of routine care.

They also had tests for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) - a marker of blood vessel inflammation - and lipoprotein(a), a genetically determined type of fat.

Compared to risks in women with the lowest levels of each marker, risks for major cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes over the next 30 years were 36% higher in women with the highest levels of LDL-C, 70% higher in women with the highest levels of hsCRP, and 33% higher in those with the highest levels of lipoprotein(a).

Women in whom all three markers were in the highest range were 2.6 times more likely to have a major cardiovascular event and 3.7 times more likely to have a stroke over the next three decades, according to a report of the study in The New England Journal of Medicine published to coincide with the presentation at the meeting.

“The three biomarkers are fully independent of each other and tell us about different biologic issues each individual woman faces,” Ridker said.

“The therapies we might use in response to an elevation in each biomarker are markedly different, and physicians can now specifically target the individual person’s biologic problem.”

While drugs that lower LDL-C and hsCRP are widely available - including statins and certain pills for high blood pressure and heart failure - drugs that reduce lipoprotein(a) levels are still in development by companies, including Novartis , Amgen , Eli Lilly and London-based Silence Therapeutics.

In some cases, lifestyle changes such as exercising and quitting smoking can be helpful.

Most of the women in the study were white Americans, but the findings would likely “have even greater impact among Black and Hispanic women for whom there is even a higher prevalence of undetected and untreated inflammation,” Ridker said.

“This is a global problem,” he added. “We need universal screening for hsCRP ... and for lipoprotein(a), just as we already have universal screening for cholesterol.”