Online
Artist Voices In-Conversation: Hollie Douglas, Kialy Tihngang & Ebun Sodipo
Join us for our online Artist Voices In Conversation event with curator Hollie Douglas and artists Kialy Tihngang and Ebun Sodipo.
As part of ‘a space' arts Artist Voices programme, we are hosting an online in-conversation and open discussion between artists Kialy Tihngang, Ebun Sodipo (‘a space’ arts’ 2022 and 2023 BHM Commission recipients) and special guest moderator, curator Hollie Douglas.
We’ll centre the discussion on storytelling and imagination as space to form history.
What does it mean to fabulate history as opposed to 'finding' 'real' history, and what tensions might arise between that fabulation and the realities of the 'real' world?
Audience members are encouraged to contribute to the discussion throughout.
The core aim of ‘a space’ arts Artist Voices programme is to support artist development by unpacking and demystifying key topics and issues of the visual arts ecology through discussion with artists and cultural workers.
About the Panelists:
Hollie Douglas is a curator currently working at the Towner gallery Eastbourne, on a project which is looking at changing the way institutions formulate collections in the future. Her work is largely concerned with the representation of artists of colour in exhibitions and collections and how curatorial processes and activism can change this. This is largely underpinned by an interest in the role of artists of colour in modernism and futurisms. Her current research is looking at the role of dreams, imagination and memory as resistance and freedom.
Ebun Sodipo makes work for black trans people of the future. Guided by black feminist study, with a methodology of collage and fabulation, her work locates and produces real and imaginable narratives of black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across the past, present, and future. In doing this, Ebun Sodipo fills in historical gaps to create moments of archival pleasure for black trans people. This work takes place across multiple spaces: galleries, festivals, theatre, digital, and print; in varied forms such as sound, performance, text, installation, video, and sculpture.
Her work has been shown, read, watched, and performed at Frieze London, Cubitt, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Goldsmiths CCA, God’s House Tower /‘a space’ arts, Narrative Projects, Raven Row, The Block Museum of Art, SHOWStudio, South London Gallery, Arcadia Missa’s How To Sleep Faster, Auto Italia, ICA, Tate Britain, Text zur Kunst, Bergen Kunsthall, Wasafiri, Glasgow CCA Annex, Camden Arts Centre. She has undertaken residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios, Rhubaba Gallery, and V.O. Curations.
Kialy Tihngang is a multidisciplinary Glasgow-based visual artist. As a British-born Cameroonian, Tihngang’s research-based practice focuses on colonial European misrepresentation, extraction, and demonisation of West African cultural practices, but also on her own misremembering, misreading, and romanticisation of said practices, primarily by designing artefacts from reimagined histories and speculated futures.
Tihngang works in sculpture, video, textiles, animation and photomontage, often in collaboration with performers and musicians, involving elaborate handmade sets, costumes and props. The works typically combine the dark humour of Nollywood with retrofuturism, satire and the visual language of advertisements aimed at mass Western audiences. Tihngang uses these as tools to explore Blackness, queerness, Britishness, and the crushing structural oppressions that surround these personal themes in absurd ways.
**The discussion will take place on zoom and is open to all.
***The event will be recorded to post on our YouTube channel.
We’ll centre the discussion on storytelling and imagination as space to form history.
What does it mean to fabulate history as opposed to 'finding' 'real' history, and what tensions might arise between that fabulation and the realities of the 'real' world?
Audience members are encouraged to contribute to the discussion throughout.
The core aim of ‘a space’ arts Artist Voices programme is to support artist development by unpacking and demystifying key topics and issues of the visual arts ecology through discussion with artists and cultural workers.
About the Panelists:
Hollie Douglas is a curator currently working at the Towner gallery Eastbourne, on a project which is looking at changing the way institutions formulate collections in the future. Her work is largely concerned with the representation of artists of colour in exhibitions and collections and how curatorial processes and activism can change this. This is largely underpinned by an interest in the role of artists of colour in modernism and futurisms. Her current research is looking at the role of dreams, imagination and memory as resistance and freedom.
Ebun Sodipo makes work for black trans people of the future. Guided by black feminist study, with a methodology of collage and fabulation, her work locates and produces real and imaginable narratives of black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across the past, present, and future. In doing this, Ebun Sodipo fills in historical gaps to create moments of archival pleasure for black trans people. This work takes place across multiple spaces: galleries, festivals, theatre, digital, and print; in varied forms such as sound, performance, text, installation, video, and sculpture.
Her work has been shown, read, watched, and performed at Frieze London, Cubitt, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Goldsmiths CCA, God’s House Tower /‘a space’ arts, Narrative Projects, Raven Row, The Block Museum of Art, SHOWStudio, South London Gallery, Arcadia Missa’s How To Sleep Faster, Auto Italia, ICA, Tate Britain, Text zur Kunst, Bergen Kunsthall, Wasafiri, Glasgow CCA Annex, Camden Arts Centre. She has undertaken residencies at Gasworks, Porthmeor Studios, Rhubaba Gallery, and V.O. Curations.
Kialy Tihngang is a multidisciplinary Glasgow-based visual artist. As a British-born Cameroonian, Tihngang’s research-based practice focuses on colonial European misrepresentation, extraction, and demonisation of West African cultural practices, but also on her own misremembering, misreading, and romanticisation of said practices, primarily by designing artefacts from reimagined histories and speculated futures.
Tihngang works in sculpture, video, textiles, animation and photomontage, often in collaboration with performers and musicians, involving elaborate handmade sets, costumes and props. The works typically combine the dark humour of Nollywood with retrofuturism, satire and the visual language of advertisements aimed at mass Western audiences. Tihngang uses these as tools to explore Blackness, queerness, Britishness, and the crushing structural oppressions that surround these personal themes in absurd ways.
**The discussion will take place on zoom and is open to all.
***The event will be recorded to post on our YouTube channel.
