Lesley Wengembo
Born 1997

From Pangia, Southern Highlands and Bundi, Madang Province

26-year-old artist currently based in Cairns

Lesley completed a Bachelor of Fine art at the National Art School of Australia in 2021.

He competed four times in the Archibald Prize and was a finalist in the prestigious Brisbane Portrait Prize in 2020.

He was raised in the Port Moresby suburb of Morata – which houses one of the city’s largest squatter settlements. Lesley feels it was growing up in this environment that led him to find art. He found painting fascinating as it was the only thing, he could do to escape his reality. In recent years his work has focused on hyper-realistic portraiture, mainly capturing indigenous faces dressed in their traditional attire.

He says: “as a contemporary indigenous artist, I try to capture an essence of what is still alive today and is expressed through their faces, before it dies out”