Mame-Diarra Niang was born in 1982, in Lyon, France, and lives in Paris. She was raised between Ivory Coast, Senegal and France and is a self-taught artist and photographer.

In her creations, she explores her concept of the “plasticity of territory”. Niang’s first solo show, Sahel Gris, took place at the Institut Français of Dakar in 2013. Her first solo show in South Africa, At the Wall, took place at Stevenson in Johannesburg in 2014.

Niang featured in Movin’Grounds, 38CC, Delft, the Netherlands (2020); Pictures from Another Wall, De Pont Museum, the Netherlands (2020); Travesías atlánticas, the 4th Montevideo Biennial (2019); Recent Histories / Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from The Walther Collection at Huis Marseille, the Netherlands (2018); Affective Affinities, the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo (2018); Strange Attractors, a curatorial publication project launched at the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018). Other group exhibitions include O Triângulo Atlântico, the 11th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018); Deconstructed Spaces, Surveyed Memories at the 11th Rencontres de Bamako (2017); Recent Histories – New African Photography at the Walther Collection in New- Ulm (2017); the 12th Dakar Biennale (2016) SEX at Stevenson, Johannesburg (2016); Armory Focus: African Perspectives – Spotlighting Artistic Practices of Global Contemporaries at The Armory Show, New York (2016); The Lay of the Land: New Photography from Africa at The Walther Collection Project Space in New York (2015); Nine Artists at Stevenson in Cape Town (2015);11th Dakar Biennale in 2014, and Le Piéton de Dakar at the Institut Français of Dakar in 2013.

In 2017 Niang conducted a residency titled Black Hole at the fifth-floor space of Stevenson Johannesburg. The residency took the form of a laboratory in which she explored this term using video as a medium and as a research tool.