Videos & Podcasts

In this episode the focus is Alia Farid. Alia Farid was born in Kuwait. She lives and works between Kuwait City and Puerto Rico. Her artwork is being exhibited at The National Museum in Cardiff.

In this podcast episode, Alia gives insights into her art, process and inspirations. She talks in detail about her AM10 installation at The National Museum in Cardiff. Plus, community members in Cardiff talk about the impact her artwork has had on them. There is also a discussion about Alia’s work featuring Environmental Anthropologist Bridget Guarasci and Amal Khalaf (Curator, Artist and Director of Programmes at Cubitt, London).

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, Artes Mundi wishes to thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In this episode the focus is Naomi Rincón Gallardo. Naomi Rincón Gallardo was born in the USA. She lives and works in Mexico. Her artwork is being exhibited at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.

In this podcast episode, Naomi gives insights into her art, process and inspirations. She talks in detail about her AM10 installation at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. Plus, community members in Cardiff talk about the impact her artwork has had on them. There is also a discussion about Naomi’s work featuring Laura Gutiérrez (Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Public Practice in the College of Fine Arts, University of Texas), artist Nina Hoechtl and Beatriz Lobo Britto, Curator at iniva.

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, Artes Mundi wishes to thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Carolina Caycedo was born in the UK to Colombian parents. She lives and works in the USA. Her artwork is being exhibited at Oriel Davies Gallery in Newton, Mid Wales and Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.

In this podcast episode, Carolina gives insights into her art, process and inspirations. She talks in detail about her AM10 installation at Oriel Davies. Plus, community members in Newtown, Mid Wales, talk about the impact her artwork has had on them. There is also a discussion about Carolina’s work featuring Liv Brissach (Curator at the Northern Norwegian Art Museum), visual artist Bárbara Santos and facilitator and wilderness guide Fern Smith.

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, Artes Mundi wishes to thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Taloi Havini was born in Bougainville and is of the Nakas/ Hakö tribe. She lives and works in Australia. Her work is exhibiting at Mostyn in Llandudno, North Wales and Chapter in Cardiff.

Taloi Havini’s work is supported by Create Australia.

In this podcast episode, Taloi gives a detailed explanation of her art, process and inspirations. She also talks in detail about her AM10 installation. Plus, Bethan Mair Williams – a Llandudno community member with her own links to Bougainville – shares her powerful reaction to Taloi’s installation at Mostyn. There is also a discussion about Taloi’s work featuring Wanda Nanibush (Curator of Indigenous Art and co-head of the Indigenous & Canadian Art Department at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto) and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson who is a writer and musician.

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, Artes Mundi wishes to thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Rushdi Anwar was born in Kurdistan and works between Thailand and Australia. His artwork is exhibiting in Amgueddfa Genedlaethol, Caerdydd – The National Museum Cardiff.

In this episode, Rushdi talks about his work, inspirations and process, as well as discussing his AM10 installation in detail. Plus there is a discussion about Rushdi’s work featuring Dr Omar Kholeif (Director of Collections and Senior Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation), Dr Hawzhin Azeez (Co-Director of the Kurdish Centre for Studies) and Shahram Khosravi (Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University). Also, members of the Cardiff Kurdish community talk about what Rushdi’s AM10 work means to them.

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, we thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi was born and continues to live and work in Vietnam. Her artworks are exhibiting at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Chapter.

In this podcast episode, Nguyen Trinh Thi gives a detailed explanation of her art, process and inspirations. She also talks in detail about her AM10 installation. Plus, local community members in Swansea give their reactions to seeing her art on display at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. There is also a discussion about Nguyen Trinh Thi’s work featuring Zoe Butt (Curator, writer and Founder/Director of In-tangible Institute), Dr. Philippa Lovatt (lecturer in Film Studies at University of St Andrews) and  May Adadol Ingawanij, who is a writer, curator and teacher.

All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, Artes Mundi wishes to thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Mounira Al Solh was born in Lebanon and works in Lebanon and The Netherlands. Her artwork is exhibiting in Amgueddfa Genedlaethol, Caerdydd – The National Museum Cardiff.

In this podcast episode, Mounira shares insights into her art, process and inspirations. She also talks in detail about her AM10 installation. Plus, members of the Oasis One World Choir (who made a collaborative performance with Mounira on the opening weekend of AM10) talk about what her work means to them. There is also a discussion about Mounira’s work featuring Rachel Dedman from the V&A, archeologist Sarah Mady and artist Amak Mahmoodian.

If you would like to see Mounira Al Solh’s installation for AM10, it is on show at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru, National Museum Wales in Cardiff. All of the AM10 installations around Wales are on display to the public until the 25th of February 2024.

For their generous support in enabling the talks and podcasts to happen, we thank the British Council in Wales, National Lottery/Art Council Wales ‘Create’ fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Mounira Al Solh’s exhibition is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

An audio-description of both the new work Elemental Gestures: Towards a Feeling of Home by Adéolá, and Finding Jane, an accompanying short film by Catriona Abuneke.

Elemental Gestures: Towards a Feeling of Home evokes the essence of the deity Yemonja/Yemaya/Yemoja. Hailing from Yoruba spirituality with manifestations in the African Diaspora, Yemonja can be understood as mother of the ocean, sustaining yet turbulent.

This work contributes to the radical engagements with water and diasporic identity that feature in the work of Artes Mundi 9 artists Firelei Baez, Dineo Seshee Bopape, and Beatriz Santiago Munoz, and that run throughout the public programme.

Adéolá is a visual artist, researcher and presenter based in Wales. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, her work explores expressions of identity and belonging in the diaspora. Adéọlá’s work is invested in the ways in which emancipatory performances such as Carnival, masquerades and rituals can inform approaches to art-making. She is currently the Founder and Co-Director of Laku Neg: a burgeoning digital artist initiative for African diaspora artists, which promotes the exchange of African diaspora knowledge through memory, philosophy, performance and storytelling, as a key focus for a reparations agenda. She is also an hourly paid lecturer at the University of South Wales.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the final episode of our At the table series with artist Prabhakar Pachpute.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions centred on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The last of six events in the At the table series presents artist Prabhakar Pachpute in conversation with curator and lecturer, Zasha Colah; Siân Williams, Head of Special Collections and Librarian for the South Wales Miners’ Library at Swansea University; Dr Radhika Mohanram, and Professor of English at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Prabhakar Pachpute (b 1986, India; lives and works in Pune) has had solo shows at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; Asilo, Via Porpora, Milan; and The Glasgow School of Art as part of Glasgow International in 2019. He has also participated in group exhibitions at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; MACBA, Barcelona and was part of the 31st São Paulo Biennial, 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, 14th Istanbul Biennial, 8th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; Dhaka Art Summit, 2nd Yinchuan Biennale and the 4th Kochi Muziris Biennale. Prabhakar Pachpute is represented by Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata.

Zasha Colah co-founded the curatorial collaborative and union of artists Clark House Initiative (Mumbai, 2010). She teaches in the department of Visual Arts & Curatorial Studies, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan, since 2018). She was part of the curatorial team led by Marco Scotini of the second Yinchuan Biennale (2018). She co-curated with Luca Cerizza the third Pune Biennale (2017) and Prabhakar Pachpute (National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2016). She authored a semifictional monograph on Prabhakar Pachpute (Experimenter Books, 2019). Her doctoral research was titled, Histories of Art Under Militarisation. Burma/Myanmar 1982-2016 (La Sapienza University, 2020), and she is currently a research fellow at 221A (Vancouver, 2020).

Siân Williams is Head of Special Collections & Librarian for the South Wales Miners’ Library at Swansea University. She is responsible for the development and promotion of the Richard Burton Archives, South Wales Miners’ Library, History of Computing Collection and Art Collection at Swansea University. In her work she has led and contributed to numerous community-based exhibitions and collaborative projects with community organisations, libraries, archives and museums. Siân is a Vice President and Secretary of Llafur: the Welsh People’s History Society, a Trustee of the Paul Robeson Wales Trust and a Trustee of the DOVE Workshop in Banwen.

Dr Radhika Mohanram is a writer and Professor of English at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University, position she has held since 2000. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Arizona University. Dr Mohanram has had Visiting Appointments at the University of Venice, Italy; University of Nantes, France, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has also held editorial positions at several journals including Social Semiotics, New Literatures Review and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the fifth episode of our At the table series with artist Meiro Koizumi.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions centred on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The penultimate of six episodes in the At the table series presents artist Meiro Koizumi in conversation with Zoe Butt, Artistic Director of the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City; comparative sociologist and historian, Abu-Bakr Madden Al-Shabazz; and Evie Manning, co-Artistic Director of Common Wealth theatre company. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Meiro Koizumi (b 1976, Japan; lives and works in Yokohama) has held solo shows in major institutions such as EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA, New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Tate Modern, London; De Hallen, Haarlem; Art Space, Sydney and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris. His work has also been included in major group exhibitions, including at the 5th Aichi Triennale; 9th Asia Pacific Triennal; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; 6th Liverpool Biennial; 14th Sharjah Biennal; MSGSU Tophane-i Amire Culture; Arts Center, Istanbul; Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev and Shanghai MOCA, amongst many others. Recently he was included in the prestigious Mercedes-Benz Art Scope residency programme in 2018. Meiro Koizumi is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and Mujin-to Production in Tokyo.

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer based in Vietnam. She is currently Artistic Director of the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s first purpose-built space for contemporary art. Her curatorial practice centres on building critically thinking and historically conscious artistic communities, fostering dialogue among countries of the global south. Her curatorial projects include interdisciplinary dialogue platforms such as Conscious Realities (2013-2016); the online exhibition Embedded South(s) (2016); and group exhibitions of Vietnamese and international artists at various international venues. She is a member of the Asian Art Council for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and in 2015 was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

Abu-Bakr Madden Al-Shabazz is an Education Consultant, Comparative Sociologist and World Historian in the Black and African experience from prehistory to the contemporary. He has successfully run a Black History Studies programme at Cardiff University for nine years and is now a Visiting Senior Fellow Lecturer for the Cardiff School of Social Sciences in Race & Education. He has worked with several cultural organisations over the past 10 years such as: The National Museum of Wales, Gentle Radical, Peak Cymru, and What’s Next, in the areas of cultural diversity with special focus on Colonisation, Black Literature, Cultural Democracy, Empire and Industrial Wales and its connection to The Caribbean and North America during slavery.

Evie Manning is Co-Artistic Director of Common Wealth, an award-winning theatre company making site-specific theatre events that encompass electronic sound, new writing, visual design and verbatim. Common Wealth are based in Bradford and Cardiff and tour productions across the UK and internationally. As Common Wealth director, her credits include: The Deal Versus The People (West Yorkshire Playhouse), No Guts, No Heart, No Glory, (Scotsman Fringe First Award / Live From TVC with BBC4), and Our Glass House (Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award). As a freelancer, Evie has collaborated and made work with The Royal Exchange, Battersea Arts Centre, Freedom Studios, Tamasha, Chris Goode and Company, Transform Festival and Southbank Centre. She was the recipient of the BBC Performing Arts Fellowship in 2015.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the fourth episode of our At the table series with artist Carrie Mae Weems.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions centred on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The fourth of six episodes in the At the table series presents artist Carrie Mae Weems in conversation with artist and professor Sonia Boyce OBE RA; Thomas J. Lax, Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA (NY); artist, writer and curator Umulkhayr Mohamed; and artist, stylist and Founder of DOCKS Magazine, Nicole Ready. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Through photography, performance and video, Carrie Mae Weems has created a complex body of art that investigates family relationships, gender roles, racism, classism, and politics. Although Weems addresses a wide array of issues, in all the work her overarching commitment is to help us better understand our present moment by examining our collective past. Weems, a MacArthur grant recipient, is represented in public and private collections around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.

Sonia Boyce OBE RA came to prominence in the early 1980s with paintings that spoke about race and gender in Britain. Since then, Boyce’s practice has taken a more multi-media and improvisational turn by bringing people together in a social practice that encourages others to speak, sing or move in relation to the past and the present. Between 2012-2017, she was Professor of Fine Art at Middlesex University and since 2014 she has been Professor of Black Art & Design at the University of the Arts London, where she holds the inaugural Chair in Black Art & Design. In 2019, Boyce was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List, for her services to art. Sonia Boyce will represent the UK at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with a major new exhibition for the British Pavilion in 2022.

Thomas J. Lax is Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA (NY) where they are currently preparing the exhibition Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present with Linda Goode Bryant. They have also worked with colleagues across MoMA on a major rehang of the museum’s collection and organized Unfinished Conversations. Previously, they worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Lax is on the board of Danspace Project and the Jerome Foundation and teaches at Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. They are on the advisory committees of organizations including Contemporary And, The Laundromat Project, Participant Inc., and Recess Assembly.

Umulkhayr Mohamed is a Welsh Somali artist, writer and curator, currently working at National Museum Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru). She is the curation lead of Lates: PITCH BLACK, a collaboration between AC-National Museum Cardiff and Artes Mundi, which is a multi-artform celebration of Blackness as boundless and infinite. Her artistic practice is invested in forgoing hierarchies in search of solidarity and liberation. Mohamed is part of British Art Network’s Emerging Curators Group, and a member of Black Curators Collective. She is currently undertaking a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Global Creative Industries.

Nicole Ready is an artist, producer, and founder of DOCKS Magazine: an annual publication exploring Black and POC culture in Wales. She recently graduated from the University of South Wales with a BA in Fashion Promotion. Nicole is currently an Engagement Producer working with Artes Mundi, a National Museum of Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru) Producer, and a part of the SSAP (Sub-Sahara Advisory Panel) Emerging Futures: Days Ahead Project. Nicole was featured on BBC Wales Online discussing the Black Lives Matter Movement, and was a guest panel member at the Privilege cafe.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the third episode of our At the table series with artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions centred on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The third of six episodes in the At the table series presents artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz in conversation with feminist anthropologist, poet, and performance artist, Dr Gina Athena Ulysse; Francis McKee, Director for Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and curator, filmmaker, and Founder of the Black Film Festival Wales, Yvonne Connikie. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist whose expanded moving image work is entangled with Boalian theater, experimental ethnography and feminist thought. She tends to work with non-actors, and incorporate improvisation into her process. Her recent work is on the sensorial unconscious of anti-colonial movements, and on everyday poetic work in the Caribbean.  Recent solo exhibitions include: Gosila, Der Tank, Basel; Rodarán Cabezas in Espacio Odeon, That which identifies them, like the eye of the cyclops en Wester Front, A Universe of Fragile Mirrors, PAMM, Miami; Song Strategy Sign, New Museum; Recent group exhibitions include: Whitney Biennial 2017, NYC; Prospect 4, New Orleans; 8th Contour Biennale, Mechelen; Ce qui ne sert pas s’oublie,CAPC-Bordeaux. She has received the Herb Alpert Arts Award, she was 2016 USA Ford Fellow, and received a 2015 Creative Capital visual artist grant for a film-in-progress titled Verano de Mujeres.

Dr Gina Athena Ulysse is a Haitian-American feminist anthropologist, poet, and performance artist. An interdisciplinary methodologist, her research questions and art practice engage geopolitics, historical representations, and the dailiness of Black diasporic conditions. Her last book, Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD (2017), is a collection of photographs, poetry and performance texts. She is a full professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz, California. ginaathenaulysse.com

Francis McKee is a writer and curator working in Glasgow. From 2005 to 2008 he was Director of Glasgow International, and since 2006 he has been the Director for Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. He is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art, working on the development of open source ideologies, and has written on the work of artists such as Christine Borland, Ross Sinclair, Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling, Matthew Barney, Pipilotti Rist, Willie Doherty, Kathy Prendergast, Abraham Cruzvillegas, and Ester Krumbachova. His most recent book is Even the Dead Rise Up (Book Works, 2017).

Yvonne Connikie is a programmer, curator, and filmmaker specialising in Black independent film. She was the Founder of the Black Film Festival Wales (2000-2008), Founding Member of the New Black Film Collective, and Assistant Curator for Black London Film Heritage. Connikie is a PhD candidate at the University of South Wales exploring the leisure activities of the Windrush Caribbeans in Butetown. She is part of the programming committee for the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival and is developing an experimental Windrush inspired film with the ‘Pitch Black’ project, created by Artes Mundi and the Museum of Wales. She continues to work with independent UK Filmmakers and Artists through her platform, Cinema Golau.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the second episode of our At the table series with artist Dineo Seshee Bopape.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions centred on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The second of six episodes in the At the table series presents artist Dineo Seshee Bopape in conversation with Marie Hélène Pereira, Curator and Director of Progammes at RAW Material Company, Senegal; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director of Showroom Gallery, London; artist and energy worker, Evan Ifekoya; and artist and filmmaker, Tina Pasotra. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Dineo Seshee Bopape was born in 1981, on a Sunday. If she were Ghanain, her name would be  akosua/akos for short. During the same year of her birth, there were perhaps 22 recorded Atlantic Ocean hurricanes. the Brixton riots took place; the song “endless love” is popular on the airwaves; two people were injured when a bomb exploded in a Durban shopping center; Bobby Sands dies; MTV is launched; the Boeing 767 makes its first airflight; Umkonto We Sizwe performs numerous underground assaults against the apartheid state. There was an earthquake that killed maybe 150 people in China; an International NGO Conference on Indigenous Populations and the Land is held in Geneva, The name ‘internet’ is mentioned for the first time; Hosni Mubarack was elected president of Egypt; there is a coup d’etat in Ghana; Princess Diana of Britain marries Charles; Bob Marley dies; apartheid SA invades Angola; AIDS is identified/ created/named; Salman Rushdie releases his book “Midnight’s Children”; the remains of the Titanic are found; Muhammad Ali retires; Winnie Mandela’s banishment orders are renewed for another 5 years; the first test tube baby is born, Thomas Sanakara rides a bike to his first cabinet meeting; Machu Pichu is declared a heritage site; her paternal grandmother dies affected by dementia; that very year millions of people cried tears (of all sorts), spoke words in many languages and billions of people dreamt…. some things continued, some things transformed, others ended(?), The world’s human population was then apparently at around 4.529 billion… today she (Bopape) is one amongst 7 billion – occupying multiple adjectives. Other concurrent events of the year of her birth, and of her lifetime, are perhaps too many to fully know…. 

Marie Hélène Pereira graduated in Management and International Business Law and after a few years working within the business world, shifted her professional interest to arts and culture. She is currently Curator and Director of Progammes at RAW Material Company, Senegal, where she has organised exhibitions and related discursive programmes including the participation of RAW Material Company to “We face forward: Art from West Africa Today” Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; ICI Curatorial Hub at TEMP, New York; The 9th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai; MARKER Art Dubai (2013). Her interests include the politics of identity, and histories of migration.

Elvira Dyangani Ose is the Director of Showroom Gallery, London. Prior to this, she held curatorial positions at the New York-based non-profit Creative Time, Götborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, and Tate Modern (International Art). She is a lecturer in visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and her curatorial and academic research has focused on the links between global art, postcolonialism and museum studies.

Evan Ifekoya is an artist and energy worker who, through archival and sonic investigations, speculates on blackness in abundance. In 2018 they established the collectively run and QTIBPOC (queer, trans*, intersex, black and people of colour) led Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.). They have presented exhibitions and performances across Europe and Internationally, most recently: Liverpool Biennial (2021); Gus Fischer New Zealand (2020); De Appel Netherlands (2019); Gasworks London (2018).

Tina Pasotra is a Cardiff-based artist and filmmaker. Interdisciplinary at its core, Pasotra’s work bridges moving image, theatre, sound, dance, installation and architecture, while always centring practices of collaboration, care and equity. Pasotra directed and co-wrote her debut narrative short film, ‘I Choose’ (2020), currently screening on BBC iPlayer. Her first commissioned piece ‘But Where Are You From?’ (2017) for C4/Random Acts in association with Big Dance Shorts India was featured at the Science Museum’s ‘Illuminating India’ event and has screened at festivals across the UK and India. In 2019, Pasotra began a dialogue with National Botanical Garden of Wales after visiting as part of her collaborative project ‘Bloom’ with Katie Smyth, and participated in a residency there in 2020. Pasotra is currently developing a forthcoming site-specific project with NBGW.

In partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University, Artes Mundi presents the first episode of our At the table series with artist Firelei Báez.

The At the table series brings together the voices of the six Artes Mundi 9 shortlisted artists alongside those of international curators, artists, historians, thinkers and writers in a series of roundtable discussions. The talks centre on themes and ideas present in their work and the interwoven relationship between histories and practices, locally to internationally. The first of six episodes in the At the table series presents artist Firelei Báez in conversation with Rachel Kent, Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Dr. Francesca Sobande, lecturer of Digital Media Studies at University of Cardiff; and visual artist, researcher and presenter Dr. Adéọlá Dewis. Imagining we are sat around a table sharing a meal and exchanging ideas, this event is a chance to hear different concerns and perspectives while getting to know the artist and their work.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Firelei Báez lives and works in New York. She is represented by James Cohan, New York. Báez has had solo exhibitions in 2019 at the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and the Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her major 2015 solo exhibition Bloodlines was organised by the Pérez Art Museum Miami and travelled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. In 2017 she was shortlisted for Pinchuk Art Foundation’s Future Generation Art Prize, exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale and in 2019 she was awarded the Soros Arts Fellowship.

Dr. Adéọlá Dewis is a visual artist, researcher and presenter based in Wales. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, her work explores expressions of identity and belonging in the diaspora. Dr. Dewis’ work is invested in the ways in which emancipatory performances such as Carnival, masquerades and rituals can inform approaches to art-making. She is currently the Founder and Director of Laku Neg: a burgeoning digital artist initiative for African diaspora artists, which promotes the exchange of African diaspora knowledge through memory, philosophy, performance and storytelling, as a key focus for a reparations agenda. She is also an hourly paid lecturer at the University of South Wales.

Rachel Kent is the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia. An experienced arts leader and art historian, she speaks and publishes widely on modern and contemporary art, with a particular interest in environmental themes and human rights. Rachel is a juror for contemporary art awards in Asia and Europe; and sits on a range of academic, government and cultural advisory and editorial panels.

Dr. Francesca Sobande is a Lecturer in Digital Media Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University). She is Course Director of the BA Media, Journalism and Culture programme and is an affiliate of the Data Justice Lab. Her research particularly focuses on digital culture, Black diaspora, feminism, creative work, power, and popular culture. Dr. Sobande is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and is on the Artes Mundi board of trustees. She is also co-author with layla-roxanne hill of the forthcoming book Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury/Zed Books, 2022).

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Dineo Seshee Bopape’s expansive practice deals with socio-political notions of memory (from the personal to the collective, the known and unknown), narration and representation as interrelated forms. Her work often utilises a diverse range of commonplace, elemental materials such as soil, bricks, timber, with found objects and archival images, video and sound, to develop dense and powerful installations. These draw together the celestial and the earthly, the bodily and the metaphysical, the personal and collective. For example, in her work for the Berlin Biennale in 2018, an orange light bathed a basement room filled with scattered objects seemingly like debris, alongside videos including those of sexual violence perpetuated against black women and footage of Nina Simone’s mental breakdown on stage. It created a tense, potent, almost hallucinogenic atmosphere of discomfort and disquiet.

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Meiro Koizumi’s videos investigate the boundaries between the private and the public, the authentic and the staged, in particular as evidenced within moments of collective or civic memory, a domain of specific importance to his Japanese cultural heritage. His work often deals specifically with individual moments where questions are asked about how we might engage with, relate to and confront, painful moments within nation’s histories and how we remember conflict without recourse to nostalgia, revisionism or jingoistic propaganda. Typically his videos unfold to present everyday situations transformed into sites of tension. His 2018 work Battlelands was the first time the artist had worked with non-Japanese subjects, Koizumi investigating the psychological dimension of the violence of war through performances by five US combat veterans from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their stories of traumatic experiences are countered by the picturing of the domestic spaces of their homes and US landscapes, created by the veterans wearing body cams, to create emotionally moving physical and mental space of those returning from war. In 2018 he was included in the prestigious Mercedes Benz Art Scope residency program for artists.

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Prabhakar Pachpute’s practice reflects on the working conditions, relentless excavation, unequal social development and land politics rooted in his home state Chandrapur, known as ‘the city of black gold’. Coming from a family of three generations of mine workers, his meticulous drawings, animations and use of charcoal have a direct connection to his subject matter and familial roots. Frequently drawing directly onto walls, Pachpute’s use of surrealist motifs create spectacular mural installations and immersive environments of imagined landscapes and hybrid figures that critically address issues of labour, exploitation and subsuming of the individual into the collective. Moving between the personal and the global, Pachpute speaks to a complexity of historical transformations on an economic, societal and environmental stage.

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Carrie Mae Weems is one of the most influential contemporary American artists working today, who for over thirty years has, through her work, investigated and focused on the serious issues that face African Americans, centred on family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. More recently she sees her work as speaking beyond the Black experience to encompass the complexity of the broader human experience and social inclusion. While best known for working with photography, her complex and multi-award winning body of work employs images through installation, performance and video, charting a move from the documentary to the creation of staged pictures that construct narratives. She has often used herself within her work, using the constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas and as a means to represent images of black communities, especially women, often excluded from mainstream representation. These bodies of photographic work have opened the space for successive generations of other Black women artists.

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is best known for films rooted in long periods of observation and research, combining aspects of ethnography and theatre to explore the social and political conditions of her native Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Her work often focuses on the redevelopment and gentrification of the Puerto Rican landscape through new infrastructure or tourism projects, or natural forces such as recent storms and earthquakes. Working with a diverse array of people from a variety of backgrounds, including healers, activists, former political prisoners and butchers, Muñoz considers these individuals as the main agents of the transformative potential of her camera, her work poetically reveals how these forces of change impact local communities. 

Join Artes Mundi and audio describer Anne Hornsby for a series of tours of Artes Mundi 9. Designed for Blind and Partially Sighted people, each session will explore a selection of artworks or moments from the Artes Mundi 9 prize-winning artists.

Anne Hornsby is a pioneer of UK Audio Description, having introduced the second audio description service in England to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in 1989. She launched Mind’s Eye in 1992 to offer audio description for theatres, galleries, museums, dance, film festivals and online content. She has won two awards for her work and is an accredited trainer. Prior to lockdown, she was audio describing over 100 events a year in addition to offering training on a regular basis.

Firelei Báez’s visually striking work reconfigures subject matter and images mined from wide-ranging Diaspora narratives, while addressing questions of cultural identity and migration to explore new possibilities for the future. Her fantastical, colourful and intricate paintings, sometimes combined into large-scale sculptural installations, bring together colonial maps overlaid with symbolic visual cues that span from lavish textiles and wall coverings with colonial-era floral motifs to calligraphic patterns, hair textures, feathered headdresses and beaded jewellery. Often featuring strong female protagonists, her works incorporate the visual languages of Caribbean mythology and histories alongside those of science fiction and fantasy to envision identities as unfixed and inherited stories as perpetually-evolving toward new, imagined worlds and states of being.