EMPIRE LINES

In this special episode, contemporary artist Sara Shamma paints experiences of conflict, modern slavery, and hopes for postwar reconstruction, travelling between Syria, Lebanon, and London, in their series, World Civil War Portraits (2015).

*Content Warning* This episode discusses rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Syria has a ‘young’ or ‘short’ art history, in Western/European terms. The country’s first galleries and art schools appeared in the 1960s, offering little contemporary arts education or practice. Working within - and rebelling against - these institutions, Damascus-born artist Sara Shamma taught themselves to paint ‘as an Old/Dutch Master’, referencing the likes of Rembrandt and Rubens in their large-scale, expressive, portraits. In their 2023 exhibition, Bold Spirits, Sara’s figurative paintings were displayed in conversation with these figures, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. And now, 25 years after graduating, the artist returns to the National Museum of Damascus with a survey spanning their personal and artistic journey through Lebanon and the UK in the twelve years since the start of the civil war. ‘I decided to keep one or two paintings from each project, to exhibit them all in Syria when the time was right,’ says Sara. ‘Now, it’s time for them to come home.’

In this conversation from 2023, when Sara was still living in London, the artist describes their decades of migrations between Dulwich and Damascus. Sara first left Syria for work, in 2000, with exhibitions in Britain as part of the the BP Portrait Prize, and a British Council partnership with Coventry, a city admired as a model for postwar reconstruction. In 2016, Sara relocated to London on an Exceptional Talent Visa but, during this period, continued to travel to their homeland frequently, working from their studio in the city, and engaging with wider Arab art communities. Through global exhibitions, Sara is now one of Syria’s most internationally recognised artists.

We touch on Syria’s changing position, as part of the Ottoman Empire and a French Mandate, during the 20th century, and the permeable borders that permitted their refuge in the years of President Bashar al-Assad’s violent regime. Sara describes their interest in biology, visiting butchers and mortuaries during their studies, and ‘surrealist eye’ on everyday life. We discuss Sara’s research into modern slavery, trafficking, and rape cultures, speaking with women during their time as artist-in-residence with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London (KCL). Sara explains how they translate oral testimonies and traumatic experiences through their artistic practice, and why music is their universal language, travelling from Sufi Asia, to the blues of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

This episode was recorded live as part of PEACE FREQUENCIES, a 24 hour live radio broadcast to mark International Human Rights Day in December 2023, and 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Listen back to the recordings with Manthia Diawara and Billy Gerard Frank online, and find all the information in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZ

Sara Shamma: Bold Spirits ran at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London until 25 February 2024.

Sara Shamma: Echoes of 12 Years runs at the National Museum of Damascus until 31 January 2025.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Artist and curator Amilcar Packer unpacks ideas of decolonisation and anti-colonialism in education, thinking through the works of Ailton Krenak, a leading activist in the Brazilian indigenous movement.

Born in Santiago de Chile, and based in São Paulo, Brazil since the 1980s, artist and curator Amilcar Packer locates his life and work ‘between’ the Pacific and Atlantic. An organiser and participant in Episode 11: To End The World As We Know It, five days of revolutionary art, discussions and performances at Tramway in Glasgow, run by Edinburgh-based collective, Arika, he shares some personal connections between South America and Scotland.

Amilcar details the work of Ailton Krenak, a leading anti-colonial activist in the Brazilian indigenous movement, who joins the programme along with transnational thinkers like Denise Ferreira da Silva, Geni Núñez, and Françoise Vergès. We discuss his practice in popular culture, including literature and radio, and environmental activism. Amilcar describes Ailton as ‘one of the knots in a net’ of entangled counterpolitical and liberation movements, sharing the struggles of Brazil’s Black and maroon communities, descendants of escaped African slaves, and many peoples of the Amazon forest and river.

As one of many contemporary thinkers in the programme, Ailton’s work provokes conversations about history, and time as a colonial, imperial, and capitalist construct. We explore his engagement with the pluriverse or multiverse, and possibility of jumping between alternative worlds. We also discuss the temporal othering of indigenous and aboriginal identities in different contexts, from the reclamation of the Americas as Turtle Island, to Karrabing Film Collective from Arson Bay, Darwin, Australia, and their presentation of The Ancestral Present - connecting with Ailton’s 2022 book, Ancestral Future.

Challenging the monoculture of Western/European thought - and simplistic understandings of religion and spirituality, sexuality, and gender, which often lack relevance or utility with respect to indigenous worldviews - Amilcar talks about cosmology, and the constructive force of ‘tensions’. We discuss the ‘human archive’ of violence and brutality, and ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Palestine, and over the definition of land rights. Amilcar shares where assimilation, making indigenous people Brazilians, has been used to ensure indigenous people lose their relations with their land, which makes it easier to dispossess. We consider whether the decolonisation of institutions like museums or universities is possible, and active forms of resistance. Exploring a plurality of approaches to study, learning, and education, Amilcar shares the ideas of Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and the importance of multiplicity, in constructing and realising other ways of being with the world and each other.Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It, presented by Arika, ran at Tramway in Glasgow and online through November 2024. The full programme, including the conversation with Ailton Krenak, is available online.

Hear more about Françoise Vergès with Professor Paul Gilroy, recorded live in conversation at The Black Atlantic Symposium in Plymouth (2023): ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/90a9fc4efeef69e879b7b77e79659f3f⁠

For more about the temporal othering of indigenous and aboriginal identities, hear artist and curator Tony Albert in the EMPIRE LINES episode about Story, Place (2023) at Frieze London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/f1c35ebd23ea579c7741305bba2e6c4e

And for more about Afro-Brazilian cultures, hear writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga on kizomba and kuduro music, in the episode on Whites Can Dance Too (2023), recorded at Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/0a7191316798c30ed1494e5fb2c3e798

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Curator Jo-Lene Ong walks through historic marketplaces across Taiwan, Paris, Devon, London, and Manchester, exchanging island mentality for more archipelagic thinking, via Steph Huang’s sculptural installation, I Am in a Pretty Pickle (2024).

Through works combining sculpture, sound, and film, contemporary artist Steph Huang explores mass production, consumption, and waste. She often focusses on the transcultural and historical dimensions of food industries, and the implications of such markets on our natural environment. Roaming the street markets of cities in Taiwan, where she was born, and London, where she lives and works, she also draws from their vernacular architectures, and different local cultures. Steph’s first exhibition at Tate Britain in London sits near the river Thames, a boat ride away from Billingsgate, the UK’s largest inland fish market; and in Manchester, at its historic Market Buildings, once part of the Victorian Smithfield Fish Market.

Curator Jo-Lene Ong connects sculptural works like I Am in a Pretty Pickle (2024), with the Situationist International’s practice of the dérive, repurposing objects collected through exploration. We situate her interest in wonder and playful approach to media with the likes of Haegue Yang, currently on view at the Hayward Gallery in London, and Rasheed Araeen, entwining the roles of cook and artist.

We look at the traces of maritime trades and food industries on our everyday lives, and our relationship with ocean ecosystems, highlighting the legacies of colonialism in contemporary capitalism and climate crises. From esea contemporary’s previous exhibitions of artists like Jane Jin Kaisen, Jo-Lene moves towards her particular interest in transmission, and more ‘watery ways of being’ beyond borders, referencing Astrida Neimanis’ hydrofeminism (2017) and looking to Sharjah Biennale 16 in 2025.

We discuss ‘island travel’ and ‘archipelagic thinking’ as central to Steph’s artistic, and Jo-Lene’s curatorial, practices. Jo-Lene shares how her relationship with identity has been shaped by working in different contexts, from Malaysia, to Amsterdam, and the UK. We discuss the relative in/visibility of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) identities in these different places - histories of Indonesia and the Dutch East Indies, and Malaysia, a British colony between the 1820s and 1957 - as well as the overlaps between Hokkein and Taiwanese languages, as variants or dialects of Chinese.

Steph Huang: There is nothing old under the sun runs at esea contemporary in Manchester until 8 December 2024. The exhibition is part of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (MTSA)’s National Touring Programme, first exhibited at Standpoint in London in 2024. The exhibition will tour to Cross Lane Projects in Kendal in March 2025.

An exhibition book of the same number launches at esea contemporary on 30 November 2024.

Art Now: Steph Huang: See, See, Sea runs at Tate Britain in London until 5 January 2025.

For more about archipelagos and Édouard Glissant, listen to ⁠Manthia Diawara⁠, co-curator of The Trembling Museum at the Hunterian in Glasgow, and artist ⁠Billy Gerard Frank on Palimpsest: Tales Spun From Sea And Memories (2019)⁠, part of ⁠PEACE FREQUENCIES 2023⁠: ⁠instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZ⁠

For more from esea contemporary, hear Musquiqui Chihying, a recent artist-in-residence, on Too Loud a Dust (2023) at Tabula Rasa Gallery during London Gallery Weekend in 2023: pod.link/1533637675/episode/29b9e85442a30e487d8a7905356541dd

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Contemporary artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and curator Diego Chocano, slip between places and times, reconstructing the landscape of Botswana in the centre of the city of London, through their filmic installation, It Will End in Tears (2024).

Curator Diego Chocano highlights how Pamela has both challenged and embraced conventions of Western/European art history. We discuss the artist’s academic approach, and ‘research’ approach to art, which has inspired interdisciplinary collaborations in the field of science, with theoretical physicist Dr. James Sylvester Gates. He details the artist’s interest in performance and artifice, drawing on film noir, wooden theatre sets, and the figure of the femme fatale for this body of work. We discuss how Pamela’s self-constructed alter ego, Asme, enables the artist more freedom of creative expression, and the ability to resist categorisation by identity, biography, or subjectivity.

⁠Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: It Will End in Tears⁠ runs at the Barbican in London until 5 January 2025.

For more, you can read my article, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/pamela-phatsimo-sunstrum-barbican

Find out more about Leo Robinson, and Édouard Glissant’s ideas of ‘trembling’, at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE: instagram.com/p/DAtbDyUIHzl/?next=%2F&img_index=3

Hear Barbican curator Florence Ostende on Carrie Mae Weems’ series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–1996): pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da

And curator Alice Wilke on Carrie Mae Weems’ Africa Series (1993), at the Kunstmuseum Basel: pod.link/1533637675/episode/d63af25b239253878ec68180cd8e5880

For more from the Curve, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7

And find out more about ancient Adinkra symbology and geometric structures in the episode about El Anatsui’s Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta (2024) at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh: pod.link/1533637675/episode/2e464e75c847d9d19cfa4dc46ea33338

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Contemporary artist Sylvia Snowden figures different approaches to expressionism, layering Western European and African American art histories, through their paintings of M Street, in Washington DC (1978-1997).

In 1962, the young artist Sylvia Snowden spent a summer in France on a student tour led by her teacher, the watercolourist Loïs Mailou Jones. They visited museums such as the Louvre, the Musée de l'Orangerie, and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, where they likely first experienced the work of expressionist artist Chaïm Soutine. His gestural brushwork and use of impasto soon ‘saturated’ into her own treatment of paint, on her return to the United States. Today, Sylvia’s work is often ‘read’ in the context of abstract expressionism, placed in conversation with artists like Oskar Kokoschka, Karel Appel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Pablo Picasso. Though art historical references to such figures are present, they are never made directly, and are found deeper, in the thick layers of acrylic paint and oil pastel that build up their works. Perhaps, like the well-travelled Jones, Sylvia would prefer to be known as ‘an American painter with no labels’.

With her first exhibition in Paris, Sylvia shares how she has literally built up her practice over the past six decades, at times tending towards abstraction, and others, more figurative works. We talk about other 20th century migrants to the French city, including Beaufort Delaney and James Baldwin, both associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and Vincent van Gogh. Sylvia talks about the M Street series, named after the place in Washington DC where she has lived and worked since the late 1970s. Sylvia talks about the ‘turning’ of the predominantly African American neighbourhood, which experienced both ‘white flight’ and gentrification. She also details how her representations of men’s and women’s bodies speak to our universal, shared humanity, not individual forms.

Sylvia details how she started painting as a ‘social commentator’, and how she sees the choice of art as a ‘responsibility’. She talks about her time at Howard University, learning with artists such as Alex Katz, James A Porter, and David Driskell, the latter widely known for establishing African American Art as a field of study in its own right. Drawing on her own teaching, we discuss the distance between painting, and talking about painting, in art history and the media, as well as access to education for young Black students today, and her interest pluralising Western/European art histories of movements like impressionism and cubism. Challenging binary understandings of artistic practice, she describes the role of intuition in artistic production, a ‘combination of emotion and intellect’ or ‘thought and feeling’, that is often ignored in Western/European cultures. Seen for the first time on the gallery walls, Sylvia describes her triptych of her mother, a professor of English Literature who studied William Shakespeare in Stratford-Upon-Avon, sharing how her practice is also like writing - and the next chapter in her work.

Inside the White Cube: Sylvia Snowden runs at White Cube Paris until 16 November 2024.

For more about Sylvia Snowden, read about their exhibitions with Edel Assanti during Frieze London in 2022, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog-post-app/frieze-2022-retrospective

For more about Chaïm Soutine read about ‍Soutine: Kossoff at Hastings Contemporary, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog-post-app/a-perfect-match-chaim-soutine-meets-leon-kossoff

For more about Oskar Kokoschka, read about A Rebel from Vienna at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, and Guggenheim Bilbao, in The Quietus: thequietus.com/culture/art/skar-kokoschka-a-rebel-from-vienna-guggenheim-bilbao-review/

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, writer Jessica J. Lee joins EMPIRE LINES live with visual artist and researcher Iman Datoo, to explore the languages of ‘natural’ history and invasive species through their book, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging (2024).

Bringing together memoir, history, and scientific research, writer Jessica J. Lee considers how both plants and people come to belong - or not - as they cross borders. Born in Canada to a Taiwanese mother and a Welsh father, Jessica often draws on her own lived experiences to observe our world in motion, and close connections between seemingly distant places - sometimes, with shared tastes. Dispersals, their latest book of linked essays, journeys further still, exploring migrations, displacements, and the entanglements of the plant and human worlds, and the language we use to describe them.

Jessica references Richard Mabey’s Weeds, Mary Douglas, and Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune, to expose our historic human and anthropocentric understanding of plant life. We discuss the everyday words and phrases concerning diasporas and diasporic identity, naturalisation, and invasive species relate to citizenship and migration law, and how human and more-than-human beings are mis/represented in the media, from giant hogweed in Victorian England, to eucalyptus, wakame kelp, seaweed, and Japanese knotweed. Drawing on their work across the South West of England, Iman Datoo shares their research into soils, potatoes, and tea. Bringing together Iman and Jessica’s works, installed at the exhibition, Invasion Ecology, at Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor, we also delve into the history of botanical illustrations and mapping as tools of colonialism - here reimagined by contemporary artists.

This episode was recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, ran from 1 June to 10 August 2024.

Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging by Jessica J. Lee is published by Penguin, and available in all good bookshops and online.

Watch the full video online, via Radical Ecology: vimeo.com/995973173

Find all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C9hjlxrIcgo

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, artist Kedisha Coakley joins EMPIRE LINES live at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, connecting their work from Jamaican and Black diasporic communities across the UK, with their research into sculptor Ronald Moody, uncovering shared interests in Ancient Egypt, indigenous Caribbean cultures, and questions of restitution.

Born in Brixton, and based in Sheffield, Kedisha Coakley’s practice spans sculpture, glassmaking, and wallpaper printed with blocks of braided hair. Commissioned for an exhibition about Ronald Moody, one of the most significant artists working in 20th century Britain, their new installation is set between his large-scale figurative wood sculptures from the 1930s, and post-war experimentations with concrete and resin casting. From Kedisha’s bronze afro-combs influenced by historic Taino cultures, we journey from objects held in the British Museum, to mahogany relief sculptures by major influences like Edna Manley.

With audio transcripts, we discuss Moody’s BBC radio broadcasts for Calling the West Indies produced by Una Marson, particularly ‘What is called Primitive Art?’ (1949). Kedisha shares Moody’s interest in primitivism, present in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Indian, and ‘oriental’ Chinese cultural forms, as well as Gothic and Renaissance works from Western/Europe. We look at photographs from Kedisha’s studio, exploring ‘African masks’ in the work of European modernists like Man Ray and Pablo Picasso, and the often marginalised role of religion and spirituality in Black and diasporic art practices. Kedisha also details her wider practice in ‘Horticultural Appropriation’, working with breadfruit, flowers, plants, and the natural environment, connecting with Moody’s description of Jamaica’s Blue Mountains and sea.

We consider Moody’s place in British art history, drawing from his contemporaries Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein, and Elizabeth Frink, as well as the group known as the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), of which Moody was a founding member.. As a self-described ‘mature student’, we look at Kedisha’s pursuit of independent, adult education, the role of market cultures and fashion, and the work of women taking care of history.

This episode was recorded live at Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life, an exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, in October 2024. The exhibition runs until 3 November 2024: hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/kedisha-coakley-and-empire-lines-live-podcast-recording/

Hear more about Kedisha’s work around ‘Horticultural Appropriation’ with Ashish Ghadiali, curator of Against Apartheid (2023) at KARST in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3

For more about the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), listen to curator Rose Sinclair in the episode on Althea McNish’s Batchelor Girl’s Room (1966/2022), recreated at the William Morris Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/953b78149a969255d6106fb60c16982b

On post-war ‘British’ art and sculpture, read about Egon Altdorf: Reaching for the Light at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/postwar-modernism-egon-altdorf-at-the-henry-moore-institute

Hear from artist Yinka Shonibare, in the episode on Decolonised Structures (Queen Victoria (2022-2023) at the Serpentine in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/01fffb739a1bd9f84f930ce41ee31676

On the globalisation of ‘African’ masks, listen to curator Osei Bonsu on Edson Chagas’ photographic series, Tipo Passe (2014-2023), in the episode about Ndidi Dike’s A History of A City in a Box (2019) at Tate Modern in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410

And for more about Édouard Glissant, listen to ⁠Manthia Diawara⁠, co-curator of The Trembling Museum at the Hunterian in Glasgow, and artist ⁠Billy Gerard Frank on Palimpsest: Tales Spun From Sea And Memories (2019)⁠, part of ⁠PEACE FREQUENCIES 2023⁠: ⁠instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZ⁠

In this special episode, Fozia Ismail and Ayan Cilmi from the feminist art collective Dhaqan Collective join EMPIRE LINES live at the Eden Project in Cornwall, alongside artists Kaajal Modi and Sovay Berriman, and environmental humanities lecturer Jim Scown, to discuss Somali cultural heritage in the face of climate crises.

In the last few decades, Somali nomadic lives have been endangered by environmental degradation, civil war, and displacement. Created in 1960 from a former British protectorate and an Italian colony, the country collapsed into 30 years of conflict following the overthrow of the military regime of President Siad Barre in 1991. Working with diasporic communities in Bristol, the Dhaqan Collective seek to find ways of building imaginative futures that support Somali people both in the UK and in East Africa. They use everyday materials, from cassette tapes and camel meats, to milk teas, foods, and textiles, to create spaces of community and healing that centre the range of experiences across generations.

Dhaqan discuss their ‘creative ecology’ of work, travelling to contexts from the Southbank Centre in London, to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. We connect with Kaajal Modi, whose practice of ‘embodied listening’ intersperses field recordings from British waterways with migration stories and reflections from marginalised communities. Based in Cornwall, Sovay Berriman mines the politics of place embedded in their work, relating to Cornish nationalisms, and working-class identities. We discuss different perceptions of women, mothers, and elders, crossing from Kaajal’s particular Ugandan Asian community, to conventional arts institutions, exploring questions of collection and restitution. Plus, Jim Scown shares his research at the intersections of soils, science, and literature.

This episode was recorded live at Interweaving Threads of Migration and Climate Justice - a weekend of talks and events at the Eden Project in Cornwall, exploring the power of audio and oral storytelling in cultural preservation - in September 2024: edenproject.com/visit/whats-on/interweaving-threads-of-migration-and-climate-justice

Both Dhaqan Collective’s House of Weaving Songs, and Kaajal Modi’s Songs of the Water, will travel to Journeys Festival 2024 in Leicester from from 11 October 2024, supported by Art Reach and Counterpoints Arts.

For more about b-side Festival 2024, read my article about Mohammad Barrangi in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/mohammad-barrangi-b-side-festival

Listen back to the talk from Reclaim Festival 2024 with Serge Attukweh Clottey on the EMPIRE LINES podcast, in the episode on Noko Y3 Dzen (There’s Something in the World (2018-Now): pod.link/1533637675/episode/8093f81c6a2eaaf7589bb73768e2a20c

And catch up on Instagram: instagram.com/p/C3pslhaI_P7/?igsh=bnJ1b2dsNHE5czk1

Find out more about Acts of Gathering with curators Misha Curson and Hannah Hooks in the episode on Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020): pod.link/1533637675/episode/0e8ab778b4ce1ad24bc15df3fec5a386

And for more cassette tapes, hear Dr. Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil sound out migration between post-colonial Kerala and the Arab Gulf, through S. A. Jameel's Dubai Kathu Pattu (Dubai Letter Song) (1977): pod.link/1533637675/episode/417429b5c504842ddbd3c82b07f7b0f8

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Artist and sculptor Permindar Kaur moves between the Black British Arts Movement, the Young British Artists (YBAs), and Barcelona in the 1990s, exploring the ambiguities of Indian and South Asian cultural identities,

Nothing is Fixed is an idea that has grown from ⁠Permindar Kaur’s 2022 exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield⁠. For their latest, in Southampton, the artist brings together the public and the private, transforming the various gallery spaces into bedrooms of a home. Beds, chairs, tables, and teddy bears - ambiguous, often unsettling, domestic objects - populate the space, as well as never-before-shown works on paper, which underline the role of drawing in their sculptural practice.

Born in Britain to Sikh parents of Indian heritage, Permindar is often exhibited in the context of the Black British Arts Movement, showing with leading members of Blk Art Group like Eddie Chambers. The artist also describes their wider interactions with the ⁠YBAs, exhibitions in Japan, and influences from their formative years of practice in Barcelona, Spain, Canada, and Sweden. We discuss encounters with artists like Mona Hatoum and Eva Hesse, Helen Chadwick and Félix González-Torres, and more surrealist storytellers like Leonora Carrington and Paula Rego, alongside the material-focussed practices of Arte Povera.

We trouble the category of ‘British Asian artists’, exploring Permindar’s work with and within particular Indian and Punjabi diasporic communities in Nottingham, Sheffield, and Glasgow, in Scotland. With series like Turbans, Permindar describes how their practice has changed over time, navigating questions of identity, representation, and the binary of non-/Western/European art practices. They share their research on a site-specific public sculpture for Southampton’s yearly Mela Festival, a long-established event which represents, rather than ‘reclaims’ space for, different South Asian cultures - and lifelong learning, from younger artists.

Permindar Kaur: Nothing is Fixed ran at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until September 2024, closing with the launch of an exhibition book of the same name, supported by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai.

Sculpture in the Park is on view at Compton Verney in Warwickshire until 2027. Kaur also presented work in A Spirit Inside, an exhibition of works from the Women’s Art Collection and the Ingram Collection, at Compton Verney until September 2024.

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 opens in venues across Plymouth on 28 September 2024, and travels to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London from 15 January 2025.

For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo.

Hear curator Griselda Pollock, from ⁠Medium and Memory (2023)⁠ at HackelBury Fine Art in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/37a51e9fab056d7b747f09f6020aa37e

Read into Jasleen Kaur’s practice, and the Turner Prize 2024, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/jasleen-kaur-interview

And other artists connected to Glasgow, including Alia Syed (instagram.com/p/C--wHJsoFp6/?img_index=1), and ⁠Ingrid Pollard, in the episode from Carbon Slowly Turning (2022)⁠ at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, the Turner Contemporary in Margate, and Tate Liverpool, and Invasion Ecology (2024): pod.link/1533637675/episode/4d74beaf7489c837185a37d397819fb8.

For more about toys and unsettling ‘children’s stories’, hear Sequoia Danielle Barnes on Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby (2024) at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop: pod.link/1533637675/episode/2b43d4e0319d49a76895b8750ade36f8

And listen out for more from Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 - coming soon.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines

Curator Tessa Giblin deconstructs El Anatsui’s monumental, sculptural textiles, unravelling the ties that still bind post-colonial Ghana, Nigeria, and Scotland in the 21st century.

Born in 1944, between the German and British colonial periods of the Gold Coast (1821-1957), El Anatsui has engaged critically with the impact of colonialism across Africa. He is well-known for his large-scale, sculptural wall hangings made by stitching-together of thousands of aluminium metal bottle tops; whisky, gin, and brandy were alcohols introduced into Ghana and Nigeria during the 15th century as ‘trade spirits’, first exchanged for gold, then enslaved people, becoming the second highest import into Africa after textiles. The artist, like his work, is considered a ‘product’ of their time. Despite major displays at the Tate Modern, Royal Academy, and British Museum in London, which have made him a ‘household name’, there was yet to be a significant exploration of his practice in the UK - until now.

Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta covers five decades of El Anatsui’s work, starting with the place of the exhibition itself, the University of Edinburgh's Old College building. Curator Tessa Giblin talks about working with the artist to shape his 'nomadic' installations, uncovering historic and contemporary connections. We discuss El’s childhood memories of making, and the indelible memory of Scotland’s role in the colonial project, with the export of organised religion and Christian missionaries. Tessa describes tapestries like Woman’s Cloth (1999-2002), inspired by Kente fabrics, the weaving traditions of fisherpeople, and the yellow clay or earth of the natural environment. From these ‘topographical’ works, we discuss his early works in wood, carving out or mapping the straight-line borders imposed upon Africa.

Tessa shares how El recreates ‘traditional’ Adinkra symbols, to highlight both the loss of cultural identity, and work of artists in telling new, transnational stories. From the artist’s watery works at the Guggenheim Bilbao, we make connections with the city’s own volcanic landscape, revealing their intergenerational work with climate crises - and younger contemporary artists.

El Anatsui: Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta runs at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh until 29 September 2024. The exhibition is part of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2024, which continues in Scotland until 25 August 2024.

For more about Otobong Nkanga and The Recent at Talbot Rice Gallery, read this article about Edinburgh’s Environmental Exhibitions in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/edinburghs-environmental-exhibitions-the-global

Hear artist Ibrahim Mahama on Sekondi Locomotive Workshop (2024) at Fruitmarket in Edinburgh, also part of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2024: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ed0be49d016ce665c1663202091ce224

And Serge Attukwei Clottey on his family’s internal migration from Jamestown/Usshertown in British Accra, Ghana, to coastal La (Labadi), Afrogallonism, and his collaborative practice, uplifting his community with upcycled plastic waste, through Noko Y3 Dzen (There’s Something in the World) (2018–Now) at the Eden Project in Cornwall: pod.link/1533637675/episode/8093f81c6a2eaaf7589bb73768e2a20c

Listen to curator Osei Bonsu, curator of the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon and A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, at Tate Modern in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410

And hear Chris Spring, former curator of the British Museum's collections from eastern and southern Africa, on ‘African’ textiles and Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx by Araminta de Clermont (2010)⁠ at the British Museum in London. pod.link/1533637675/episode/a32298611ba95c955aba254a4ef996dd

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

And Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936⁠

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/empirelines