Atong Atem (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1991) is a Dinka Bor (Awulian) South Sudanese-Australian artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. She studied painting at Sydney University's College of the Arts before continuing her undergraduate studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Her work explores the history of photography, the shadows of colonialism and the practices, rituals and mythology of the Dinka People of South Sudan.
Her work is primarily an examination of familial archives, colonial documentation, and portraiture as world building. Atong's work exists in response to the politics of displacement, science fiction as prophecy and, as an acknowledgment of the legacy of studio photography as cultural practice.
Her studio photography honours the works of Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta and the writings of African scholars like Manthia Diawara and The Crystalists of 1970s Khartoum.