EMPIRE LINES

Artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, and Hans Ulrich Obrist and Tamsin Hong of The Serpentine Galleries, coat London’s historic statues and public monuments with fresh layers of history. For over 30 years, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA has used Western European art history to explore contemporary culture and national identities. With his iconic use of Dutch wax print fabric - inspired by Indonesian batik designs, mass-produced in the Netherlands (and now China) and sold to British colonies in West Africa - he troubles ideas of ‘authentic’ ‘African prints’. Painting these colourful patterns on his smaller-scale replicas of sculptures of British figures like Winston Churchill, Robert Clive, and Robert Milligan, he engages with contemporary debates raised in Black Lives Matter (#BLM) and the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol. Suspended States, the artist’s first London solo exhibition in over 20 years, puts these questions of cultural identity and whiteness, within the modern contexts of globalisation, economics, and art markets. Wind Sculptures speak to movements across borders, other works how architectures of power affect refuge, migration, and the legacies of imperialism in wars, conflict, and peace today. With his Library series, we read into Wole Soyinka, Bisi Silva, and canonised 17th, 18th, and 19th century artists like Diego Velázquez, focussing on Yinka's engagement with Pablo Picasso, modernism, and ‘primitivism’. Hans Ulrich Obrist and Tamsin Hong highlight the connection between the Serpentine’s ecological work, and Yinka’s new woodcuts and drawings which consider the impact of colonisation on the environment. As a self-described ‘post-colonial hybrid’, Yinka details his diasporic social practices, including his Guest Project experimental space in Hackney, and G.A.S. Foundation in Nigeria, and collaborations with young artists and researchers like Leo Robinson, Péjú Oshin, and Alayo Akinkubye. Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States runs at the Serpentine Galleries in London until 1 September 2024. Yinka is also an Invited Artist, and participant in Nigeria Imaginary, the official Nigerian Pavilion, at the 60th Venice Biennale, which runs until 24 November 2024. Part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice, a series of episodes leading to Foreigners Everywhere (Stranieri Ovunque), the 60th Venice Biennale or International Art Exhibition in Italy, in April 2024. For more about Dutch wax fabric and ‘African’ textiles, listen to Lubaina Himid on Lost Threads (2021, 2023) at the Holburne Museum in Bath and British Textile Biennial 2021, and the British Museum’s Dr. Chris Spring on Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx by Araminta de Clermont (2010)⁠. For more about Nelson's Ship in a Bottle (2010), listen to historicity London, a podcast series of audio walking tours, exploring how cities got to be the way they are. On bronze as the ‘media of history’, hear artist Pio Abad on Giolo’s Lament (2023) at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. And on the globalisation of ‘African’ masks, listen to Tate curator Osei Bonsu in the episode about Ndidi Dike’s A History of A City in a Box (2019). For more about the Blk Art Group, hear curator Dorothy Price on Claudette Johnson’s And I Have My Own Business in This Skin (1982) at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Hear curator Folakunle Oshun, and more about Yinka Shonibare’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998), in the episode on Lagos Soundscapes by Emeka Ogboh (2023), at the South London Gallery. Read about Nengi Omuku in this article about Soulscapes at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. And for other artists inspired by the port city of Venice, hear John Akomfrah of the British Pavilion (2024) on ⁠Arcadia (2023)⁠ at The Box in Plymouth. WITH: Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, British-Nigerian artist. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, and Tamsin Hong, Exhibitions Curator, at the Serpentine Galleries in London. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠

Artist Zineb Sedira records cultural and postcolonial connections between Algeria, France, Italy, and the UK from the 1960s, featuring films, rugs, and radical magazines from her personal archive. Dreams Have No Titles (2022) is Zineb Sedira’s love letter to cinema, the classic films of her childhood in Paris, coming of age in Brixton in London, and ‘return’ to Algiers - three cities between which the artist lives and practices. Born in 1963, the year after Algeria achieved independence from French colonial rule, her and her family’s diasporic story is central to her practice. Zineb recalls her first encounters with 'militant cinema', and international co-productions like the Golden Lion-winning The Battle of Algiers (1966). She shares her decision to represent France at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, controversial reactions from French media and society, and solidarity from her radical contemporaries and women, like Françoise Vergès, Sonia Boyce, Latifa Echakhch, Alberta Whittle, and Gilane Tawadros. We discuss the legacy of her work in the selection of Julien Creuzet, the first person of Caribbean descent and from the French overseas territories to represent France at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Zineb shares how personal histories contribute to collective memory, subverting ideas of ‘collection’, and using museum and gallery spaces to make archives more accessible. With orientalist tapestries and textiles - her ‘feminist awakening’ - we discuss how culture can both perpetuate political and colonial hierarchies, and provide the possibility to ‘decolonise oneself’. From her academic research in the diaspora, Zineb suggests how she carried much knowledge in her body as lived experience, detailing her interest in oral histories (and podcasts!), as living archives. With Nina Simone, Miriam Makebe, and Archie Shepp, performers at the Pan-African Festival in Algiers (1969), she shows her love of jazz and rock music, played with her community of squatters and fellow students from Central Saint Martins. Finally, we see how the meaning of her participatory works change as they travel and migrate between global audiences, and institutions and funding in Algiers today, via aria, her research residency for artists. Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles runs at the Whitechapel Gallery in London until 12 May 2024. A free Artist and Curator Talk takes place at the Gallery on 11 April 2024. and the film version of the work shows at Tate Britain in London until September 2024. Zineb Sedira: Let’s Go On Singing! ran at the Goodman Gallery in London until 16 March 2024. Part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice, a series of episodes leading to Foreigners Everywhere (Stranieri Ovunque), the 60th Venice Biennale or International Art Exhibition in Italy, in April 2024. For more about Souffles, Tricontinental, and the Casablanca Art School (1962-1987), listen to curator Morad Montazami at Tate St Ives in Cornwall. For more about Baya, read into: Baya: Icon of Algerian Painting at the Arab World Institute, Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), in Paris. Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation, part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World. at Christie’s London. And for other artists inspired by the port city of Venice, hear John Akomfrah of the British Pavilion (2024) on Arcadia (2023) at The Box in Plymouth, and curator Hammad Nasar on Nusra Latif Qureshi’s 2009 work, Did You Come Here To Find History? WITH: Zineb Sedira, Paris and London-based artist, who also works in Algeria. Working across photography, film, installation and performance, she was shortlisted for the 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Dreams Have No Titles was first commissioned for the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. 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 archivist Pio Abad draws out lines between Oxford, the Americas, and the Philippines, making personal connections with historic collections, and reconstructing networks of trafficking, tattooing, and 20th century dictatorships. Pio Abad’s practice is deeply informed by global histories, with a particular focus on the Philippines. Here, he was born and raised in a family of activists, at a time of conflict and corruption under the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (1965-1986). His detailed reconstructions of their collection - acquired under the pseudonyms of Jane Ryan and William Saunders - expose Western/Europe complicities in Asian colonial histories, from Credit Suisse to the American Republican Party, and critique how many museums collect, display, and interpret the objects they hold today. In his first UK exhibition in a decade, titled for Mark Twain’s 1901 anti-imperial satire, Pio connects these local and global histories. With works spanning engraving, sculpture, and jewellery, produced in collaboration with his partner, Frances Wadworth Jones, he reengages objects found at the University of Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum, St John’s College, and Blenheim Palace - often marginalised, ignored, or forgotten. With an etching of Prince Giolo or the ‘Painted Prince’, a 17th century slave depicted by John Savage, Pio outlines why his practice is anchored around the body. We also look at two reconstructed tiaras, which connect the Romanovs of the Russian Empire, to the Royal Family in the UK, all via Christie’s auction house.Pio shares why he often shows his work alongside others, like the Filipino American artist and art historian Carlos Villa, plus the politics, collections, and textiles of Pacita Abad, his aunt. He details his use of monumental media like marble and bronze, ‘the material of history’. Pio explains his approach to ‘diasporic objects’, not things, but travelling ‘networks of relationships’, which challenge binaries between the East and West, and historic and contemporary experiences - thus locating himself within Oxford’s archives. Ashmolean NOW: Pio Abad: To Those Sitting in Darkness runs at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 8 September 2024, accompanied by a full exhibition catalogue. Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, Pio’s forthcoming exhibition book, is co-published by Ateneo Art Gallery and Hato Press, and available online from the end of May 2025. For other artists who’ve worked with objects in Oxford’s museum collections, read about: - Ashmolean NOW: Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubbs, at the Ashmolean Museum. - Marina Abramović: Gates and Portals, at Modern Art Oxford and the Pitt Rivers Museum. For more about the history of the Spanish Empire in the Philippines, listen to Dr. Stephanie Porras’ EMPIRE LINES on an ⁠Ivory Statue of St. Michael the Archangel, Basilica of Guadalupe (17th Century)⁠. And hear Taloi Havini, another artist working with Silverlens Gallery in the Philippines, on Habitat (2017), at Mostyn Gallery for Artes Mundi 10. WITH: Pio Abad, London-based artist, concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. He is also the curator of the estate of his aunt, the Filipino American artist Pacita Abad. 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

Curators Ros Carter and Sofie Krogh Christensen chart Pia Arke’s photo-activism across the Arctic region, from a pinhole view to wider perspectives on Indigenous and Inuit experiences in the 20th century. Though scarcely exhibited outside Scandinavia, Pia Arke (1958–2007) is widely acknowledged as one of the region’s most important artistic researchers, ‘photo-activists’, and postcolonial critics. Born in Scoresbysund, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) to a Greenlandic mother and a Danish father, Arke asserted an identity that was defined as neither exclusively Danish or Greenlandic; a ‘third place’ that allowed for hybridity and resisted binary categories or polarisation. Through performance art, writing and photography, she examines the complex ethnic and cultural relationships between Denmark and Greenland, using long exposure to highlight continuities over time. Modern Danish colonial rule started in the 18th century, and Greenland wouldn’t became a fully autonomous state until the 1970s. Still dependent on grants, much of Greenland’s economic and foreign policy remains under Danish control. In 1990, the artist developed her own hand-built, life-size camera obscura to photograph the landscapes of Greenland that she had known as a child. Reconstructed today at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, and KW Institute in Berlin, the curators share how Arke was drawn to the ‘in-between’ media of photography, like herself, a ‘mongrel’ which challenged artistic conventions. Arke’s self and group portraits, reappropriated photographs, and archive collages also mark stark interventions, reinserting Indigenous and Inuit people and women into Nordic narratives, challenging the artist’s exclusion from conceptual art circles, and stereotypes of ‘naive’ and folk painting. Arke died before she could experience the growing interest in her work; its continued relevance to questions of representation, climate crises, and the impact of global economics on Indigenous communities throughout the arctic regions, is evident in the work of other artists on display, and contemporaries like Jessie Kleemann, Anna Birthe-Hove, and Julie Edel Hardenberg. We discuss Arke’s experience of art education in Copenhagen, and the ongoing efforts by the likes of the Nuuk Art Museum to find a language for Inuit art histories. Plus, we consider shared histories between Greenland, Denmark, and the UK - including the British explorer who gave his name to Scoresbysund. Pia Arke: Silences and Stories runs at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 11 May 2024. The partner exhibition, Pia Arke: Arctic Hysteria, runs at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from 6 July 2024. A new publication on Pia Arke’s work, co-published by John Hansard Gallery and KW Institute, will be available in late April 2024. Symposiums will take place in both Southampton and Berlin too. Recommended Exhibitions: Outi Pieski runs at Tate St Ives in Cornwall until 6 May 2024. Michelle Williams Gamaker: The Silver Wave runs at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter until 27 October 2024. Shuvinai Ashoona: When I Draw runs at The Perimeter in London until 26 April 2024. For more about Godland, Hlynur Pálmason (2023), read my article from the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) 2022. On Sonia Ferlov Mancoba, hear Cobra Museum curators Winnie Sze and Pim Arts on We Kiss the Earth: Danish Modern Art, 1934-1948. On long exposures, hear photographer Hélène Amouzou and curator Bindi Vora on Voyages (2023). WITH: Ros Carter, Head of Programme (Senior Curator) at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. Sofie Krogh Christensen, Associate Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. They are the respective curators of Silences and Stories and Arctic Hysteria. 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

Art historian and Professor Griselda Pollock traces the memories of contemporary artist women like Sutapa Biswas, one of her students in the 1980s, and the entanglements in feminist, queer, and postcolonial thinking in art schools and universities. Griselda Pollock has long advocated for the critical function of contemporary art - and artists - in society. Whether paintings, drawings, or sculptures, these media can translate the traumatic legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and migration into visual form, and serve as refusals to forget - especially in our memory-effacing digital age. Born in apartheid South Africa, Griselda has lectured in global contexts; at the University of Leeds in the 1980s, she encountered Sutapa Biswas, a ‘force of nature’ and one of the institution’s first POC art students. She shares her experience of the two-way flows of teaching and learning. Drawing on stills from the artist’s new film work Lumen (2021), and historic ‘Housewives with Steak-Knives’ (1984-1985), she highlights both Bengali Indian imagery, and motifs of 17th and 18th century Old/Dutch Masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt - and why the artist ‘didn’t need Artemisia Gentileschi’ when she had the Hindu goddess Kali. Engaging with leaders of the Blk Art Group like Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce, and Claudette Johnson, we find connections with the first generation of British artists, born in the UK of migrant parents. Griselda also shares the important work of art historians and academics beyond Western/Europe, like Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Catherine de Zegher, and Hiroko Hagewara. We discuss how being open to challenge and conversation, unsettling your own assumptions, denormalising and widening visibility are all ongoing obligations. Still, with Coral Woodbury’s paintings, layered atop H.W. Jansen’s History of Art (1968), we see how little the education system has changed. Griselda concludes with thoughts on Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and challenging the norms of modernist colonial tourism within the confines of free speech and market demand. Medium and Memory, curated by Griselda Pollock, ran at HackelBury Fine Art in London until 18 November 2023. An expanded exhibition of Coral Woodbury’s Revised Edition runs until 4 May 2024. Griselda Pollock on Gauguin is published by Thames & Hudson, and available from 28 May 2024. For more from Lubaina Himid, hear the artist on their work Lost Threads (2021, 2023), at the Holburne Museum in Bath: pod.link/1533637675/episode/4322d5fba61b6aed319a973f70d237b0 And read about their recent exhibition at Tate Modern, and work with the Royal Academy (RA) in London, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city For more about The Thin Black Line exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London (1985), hear curator Dorothy Price on Claudette Johnson’s And I Have My Own Business in This Skin (1982) at the Courtauld Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/707a0e05d3130f658c3473f2fdb559fc For more about the artist Gego, who practiced in Germany and South America, read my article about Measuring Infinity at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2023), in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/infinite-viewpoints-gego-at-the-guggenheim-bilbao WITH: Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of CentreCATH (Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History) at the University of Leeds. WITH: Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of CentreCATH (Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History) at the University of Leeds. She won the Holberg Prize in 2020 for her contributions to feminism in art history and cultural studies, books, and exhibitions. She is the curator of Medium and Memory. ART: ‘Lumen, Sutapa Biswas (2017) and Lubaina Himid, from the Revised Edition series, Coral Woodbury (2023)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Artist and curator Lubaina Himid unravels entangled histories of transatlantic slavery and textile production, across continents, and Britain’s museum collections, via Lost Threads (2021, 2023). Lubaina Himid considers herself ‘fundamentally a painter’, but textiles have long been part of her life and practice. Had she stayed in Zanzibar, the country of her birth in East Africa, she may have become a kanga designer, following a pattern set by her mother’s interest in fashion, and childhood spent around department stores in London. First commissioned by the British Textile Biennial in 2021, and installed in Gawthorpe Hall’s Great Barn, her 400m-long work Lost Threads’ flows in a manner reflective of the movement of the oceans, seas, and waterways which historically carried raw cotton, spun yarn, and woven textiles between continents, as well as enslaved people from Africa to pick raw cotton in the southern states of America, and workers who migrated from South Asia to operate looms in East Lancashire. Now on display in Bath, the rich Dutch wax fabrics resonate with the portraits on display in the Holburne Museum’s collection of 17th and 18th century paintings - symbols of how much of the wealth and prosperity of south-west England has been derived from plantations in the West Indies. Lubaina talks about how the meaning of her work changes as it travels to different contexts, with works interpreted with respect to Indian Ocean histories in the port city of Sharjah, to accessible, participatory works in Cardiff, and across Wales. We consider her ‘creative interventions’ in object museums and historic collections, ‘obliterating the beauty’ of domestic items like ceramics, and her work with risk-taking curators in ‘regional’ and ‘non-conventional’ exhibition spaces. We discuss her formative work within the Blk Art group in the 1980s, collaboration with other women, and being the first Black artist to win the Turner Prize in 2017. And drawing on her interests in theatre, Lubaina hints at other collections and seemingly ‘resolved’ histories that she’d like to unsettle next. Lubaina Himid: Lost Threads runs at the Holburne Museum in Bath until 21 April 2024. For more about Dutch wax fabric and ‘African’ textiles, hear the British Museum's Dr. Chris Spring on Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx, Araminta de Clermont (2010). For more about Claudette Johnson, hear curator Dorothy Price on And I Have My Own Business in This Skin (1982) at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Hear artist Ingrid Pollard on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Hear curator Griselda Pollock from Medium and Memory (2023) at HackelBury Fine Art in London. And for more about the wealth of colonial, Caribbean sugar plantations which founded the Holburne Museum, hear Dr. Lou Roper on ⁠Philip Lea and John Seller’s A New Map of the Island of Barbados (1686)⁠, an object in its collection. Recommended reading: On Lubaina Himid: gowithyamo.com/blog/the-revolutionary-act-of-walking-in-the-city On Maud Sulter: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house On Sonia Boyce: gowithyamo.com/blog/feeling-her-way-sonia-boyces-noisy-exhibition On Life Between Islands at Tate Britain: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain WITH: Lubaina Himid, British artist and curator, and professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire. Himid was one of the first artists involved in the UK's Black Art movement in the 1980s, and appointed MBE and later CBE for services to Black Women's/Art. She won the Turner Prize in 2017, and continues to produce work globally. ART: ‘Lost Threads, Lubaina Himid (2021, 2023)’. SOUNDS: Super Slow Way, British Textile Biennial (2021). 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

Decolonial thinker Professor Paul Gilroy joins EMPIRE LINES live in Plymouth, to chart thirty years since the publication of The Black Atlantic, his influential book about race, nationalism, and the formation of a transoceanic, diasporic culture, of African, American, British, and Caribbean heritages. Published in 1993, Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness explores the interconnectedness of Black diasporas and communities across Western/Europe. He argues that the experience of slavery and colonisation, racism and global migration has shaped a unique Black cultural identity that transcends national borders. By examining the cultural contributions of Black individuals in music, literature, and art, Paul suggests that the Black Atlantic remains a site of resistance and creativity. Highlighting the plural and complex experiences of Black people throughout history and today, he challenges the notion of a singular, essential Black identity. We consider some of the transdisciplinary artist-activist-academics referenced in his texts, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Stuart Hall, and James Baldwin, to more contemporary figures, like Nadia Cattouse, bell hooks, and June Jordan, and Angeline Morrison. Plus, Paul talks about his early interests in music journalism, research into Black jazz and blues music, as well as British folk and country songs - and even Eminem. We consider Paul’s engagements with Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Cultural Studies in Birmingham in the Midlands, and how his practice challenges ideas of Black nationalism, Afro-centrism, and political Blackness. We discuss too his ideas about afro-pessimism and planetary humanism, and how capitalism, militarism, and the environment has changed over the last thirty years. A self-described ‘child of Rachel Carson’, he details his support for Extinction Rebellion, and the obligation of older generations to find hope in an era of climate and ecological crises. Finally, Paul describes his ‘Creole upbringing’ in north London, connecting with his Guyanese heritage in the multicultural, cosmopolitan city, and how his mixed parentage shaped his relationship with rural landscapes, including the south-west of England, from where we speak. This episode was recorded live at the Black Atlantic Symposium in Plymouth - a series of talks and live performances, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Paul Gilroy’s formative text - in November 2023: eventbrite.co.uk/e/black-atlantic-tickets-750903260867?aff=oddtdtcreator For more, listen to Ashish Ghadiali on the exhibition Against Apartheid (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3 For more about Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now (2021-2022) at Tate Britain in London, read my article for Artmag: artmag.co.uk/the-caribbean-condensed-life-between-islands-at-the-tate-britain/ For more about Ingrid Pollard, hear the artist on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 For more about the Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, listen to Raina Lampkins-Felder, curator at the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and Royal Academy in London: https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/2cab2757a707f76d6b5e85dbe1b62993 WITH: Professor Paul Gilroy, sociologist, Founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation at University College London (UCL), and Co-Chair of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN). He won the Holberg Prize in 2019. ART: ‘’The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy (1993-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live in Plymouth, with Radical Ecology)’ 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 Serge Attukwei Clottey joins EMPIRE LINES live at the Eden Project in Cornwall, to discuss Afrogallonism, uplifting communities with upcycled plastic waste, and how the traditional Ghanaian harvest festival of Homowo challenges colonial hierarchies of gender. Accra-based artist Serge Attukwei Clottey works across installation, performance, photography, painting, and sculpture, exploring personal and political narratives rooted in histories of trade and migration. He refers to his practice with yellow plastic, Kufuor-era, cooking oil cans as ‘Afrogallonism’, using found and recycled materials to create a dialogue with the city’s cultural history and identity, whilst exploring the meanings that are invested in everyday objects, and how they circulate in local and global economies. Referencing Ghana’s historic wealth, a region known as the Gold Coast during British colonial rule during 19th and 20th century, Serge’s installations like Follow the Yellow Brick Road (2015-2020) also serve a practical function, in creating wealth and employment for the local community. On display alongside his existing work at the Eden Project is a new audio piece, a remembrance of famine that once befell pre-colonial Ghana, and is once again impacting farmers as a consequence of climate change. Serge talks about his family’s migration from city of Jamestown/Usshertown, in British Accra, to La (Labadi), on the coast, and how water has long infiltrated his practice. We discuss the realities of resource extraction and consumption captured by his work, connecting with the likes of Romauld Hazoumè, El Anatsui, Zina Saro-Wiwa, and Wura-Natasha Ogunji. Serge shares his interest in political performance art, and collaborating with young people. We open My Mother’s Wardrobe (2015-2016), in which Serge invited men to wear women’s clothes and make-up to perform everyday and ritual tasks, disrupting conventions of gender and sexuality imposed upon and appropriated by many African countries during colonial rule. And Serge talks about his commissions across the world, from Desert X, to Kew Gardens, and the National Portrait Gallery in London, where his Windrush Portrait of Mr. Laceta Reid proudly stands. This episode was recorded live at Reclaim - a weekend of talks and events at the Eden Project in Cornwall, curated to support mental and planetary wellbeing - in January 2024: edenproject.com/visit/whats-on/reclaim Acts of Gathering runs at the Eden Project in Cornwall until 14 April 2024. For more, hear 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 For more about African masks and performance, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410 About Ashanti Hare, and the south-west arts ecology, hear curator Ashish Ghadiali on Radical Ecology’s recent exhibition at KARST in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3 For more ‘African’ textiles, hear Dr. Chris Spring on Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx, Araminta de Clermont (2010): pod.link/1533637675/episode/a32298611ba95c955aba254a4ef996dd And on sea/water as a historical archive, listen to these episodes on: John Akomfrah’s Arcadia (2023), at The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/31cdf80a5d524e4f369140ef3283a6cd Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), at the Barbican in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7 WITH: Dr. Serge Attukwei Clottey, Accra-based visual artist. 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 winner of Artes Mundi 10 - Taloi Havini mines connections between extractive industries in the Pacific Islands, and Wales. documenting the environmental damage caused by colonial, and patriarchal, relations with land, in Habitat (2017). The Panguna copper mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea was the largest in the world when it first opened in 1972. Run by the Australian mining company, Conzinc Riotinto, it symbolises how legacies of extraction - in colonialism, and contemporary capitalism - are often entangled. Born in Bougainville, and now based in Brisbane, Taloi Havini’s own multidisciplinary artistic practice is informed by her matrilineal ties to her land and communities. In Habitat, a three-channel, immersive video installation, Taloi follows the journey of a woman called Agata, as she continues to investigate the legacies of resource extraction in Panguna and the Pacific region. Moving from lush greens to lurid blue waters - unnatural colours which Taloi hasn’t tampered with in film - we trace the poisonous tailings, waste products of mining, that have destroyed the landscape. Taloi talks about how mining has ‘robbed’ people of sustainable ways of living, and how communities have come together to resist the imposition of destructive, gendered relationships to land. She describes various women as leaders, and shares her research-based practice, based on the intergenerational transfer of Indigenous Knowledge Systems,. Taloi details her work in ‘countermapping’, turning the same tools used by 19th century British settler-governments in Australia and New Zealand (Aoterea) for colonial discovery, plunder, and control, to showing evidence for those seeking environmental compensation. She also shares how her communities asked her to use drones, challenging the temporal othering of Indigenous identities. Acknowledging her particular identity from the Nakas Tribe of Hakö people, Taloi connects with the practices of other Pacific artists, and details her forthcoming curatorial project, Re-stor(y)ing Oceania at Ocean Space, part of the Venice Biennale. On her announcement as winner of Artes Mundi 10, the UK’s largest contemporary art prize, she connects with her contemporaries - including John Akomfrah, Rushdi Anwar, Alia Farid, and Naomi Rincón Gallardo - and the solidarity shared by this year’s participants, most of whom come from areas of conflict, in seeking peace with respect to the situation in Palestine. She also shares how the work translates as it travels, challenging stereotypes like the ‘tropicalisation’ of Pacific identities, by platforming everyday Indigenous and Black experiences and identities. And at the Prize announcement in Cardiff, we discuss how Habitat resonates in local communities in Wales, a nation with its own particular relationship with oil, gas, and coal resource extraction. Artes Mundi 10 runs at venues across Wales until 25 February 2024. RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology ran at the Barbican in London until 14 January 2024, and travels to FOMU in Antwerp, Belgium until 14 August 2024. WITH: Taloi Havini, multidisciplinary artist based in Brisbane, Australia. She uses a range of media including photography, audio–video, sculpture, immersive installation and print, to probe intersections of history, identity, and nation-building within the matrilineal social structures of her birthplace in Arawa, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. Taloi is the curator of Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania: Latai Taumoepeau, Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta at Ocean Space, Venice (2024), and winner of Artes Mundi 10 (AM10), the UK’s leading biennial exhibition and international contemporary art prize, presented with the Bagri Foundation. ART: ‘Habitat, Taloi Havini (2017)’. 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

Jamie Ruers, Mariano Ben Plotkin, and Mariano Ruperthuz Honorato, from the Freud Museum in London, reinterpret psychoanalysis through 20th century Latin American pop culture, relocating the practice in radio shows, surrealist photographs, women’s magazines, and comic books from the 1960s, like Freud: El Mago de los Sueños (The Wizard of Dreams). Psychoanalysis is often considered a practice of the Global North, starting in Sigmund Freud’s home in Vienna before World War II. But South America has been at the forefront of the practice since the end of the 20th century, where it is is even more popular than Europe. So who are the figures who led - and simultaneously developed - such thinking? And how did Buenos Aires come to have the highest proportion of psychoanalysts in the world? Curator and researchers Jamie Ruers, Mariano Ben Plotkin, and Mariano Ruperthuz Honorato share how psychoanalysis permeated all layers of society, especially pop culture. They draw on existing traditions and new trends like magical realism, associated with Jorge Luis Borges. We discuss the ‘cultural complex’ of dreams and sex, and the difference between Freudism and psychoanalysis, highlighting histories of exchange and reinterpretation, agency and appropriation for economic gain, rather than simplying adoption or propagation, of Freud’s thinking. Beyond Spanish, Portuguese, both languages of colonial import, we consider the many ways Freud’s works were translated, and some of those he failed to credit, whose contributions have been written out of history, like Peruvian psychiatrist Honorio Delgado, Julio Pires Porto-Carrero, founder of the Society of Brazilian Psychoanalysis (1928), and disciple of Juliano Moreira, the son of a Black slave who picked up Freud’s ideas and circulated them throughout Brazil. We hear Gastão Pereira da Silva’s radio programmes, authored ‘in the vein of Dr. Frasier Crane’, and read women’s magazines like Idilio, illustrated by exiles like the German-Argentinian photographer Grete Stern, whose surrealist images highlight the intellectual interests and engagements of women, and shared experiences of migrants across continents. Plus, contemporary artworks and interventions in Freud’s former home in London challenge the exotification of South America, connecting the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of people both past and present. Freud and Latin America runs at the Freud Museum in London until 14 July 2024. For more from the Freud Museum in London, hear: Co-curators Miriam Leonard and Daniel Orrells on a Red-Figure Hydria of Oedipus and the Sphinx, Ancient Greece (380-360BCE), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/7a89c8d48acda4147d3d51c5a065b942 And Professor Craig Clunas on a Pierced Jade Scholar Screen, China (19th Century), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/44861b4a5e6a32380693ec6622210890 WITH: Jamie Ruers, art historian. Mariano Ben Plotkin and Mariano Ruperthuz Honorato, authors of Estimado Dr Freud: una cultura historia del psicoanálisis en América Latina (Edhasa, 2017), provides the narrative which guides the exhibition. They are the curator, and researchers, of Freud and Latin America. ART: ‘Freud: El Mago de los Sueños (The Wizard of Dreams), Vidas Ilustres Comic Book (1963)’. 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

Jana Manuelpillai revisits the Madras College of Arts and Crafts, the first British colonial art school set up in India, through the post-independence practice and striking monochrome works of A.P. Santhanaraj. The Madras College of Arts and Crafts in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, was the first art school in India, set up by the British colonial administrator in 1850. Post-independence in 1948, as the Government College of Arts and Crafts, teachers like K.C.S. Paniker and S. Dhanapal, and A.P. - Andrew Peter - Santhanaraj, transformed from the School, from its ‘Kensington style’ education, to focus on Indian influences. Historical attention has focussed on schools in Bombay, Baroda, Calcutta, and Delhi, but curator Jana Manuelpillai suggests that this actually let a more ‘authentic’ southern idiom to flourish - something he continues to explore with contemporary artists. Marking 55 years since Madras State was renamed Tamil Nadu, Jana shares footage from his meetings with the Santhanaraj, and outlines his plural influences, from Indian fresco painting to the art of Jackson Pollock. We discuss the diversity and deep practice of traditional religions in the south, and the differences between European primitivism and nativism, ‘othering’ the likes of Pablo Picasso. Plus, we discuss the globalisation of contemporary art markets, challenging London, New York, and Paris’ primacy, and the ‘stamps of approval’ they’ve granted diaspora artists past. A.P. Santhanaraj (1932-2009): Modern & Contemporary Art from South India ran at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS in London until 23 September 2023. You can find more at the Noble Sage Art Collection, online and in London. For more South Asian art histories, hear curator Hammad Nasar on Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/f6e05083a7ee933e33f15628b5f0f209 And read more about the exhibition, Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, at MK Gallery and The Box, in my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery WITH: Jana Manuelpillai, Director of The Noble Sage Art Collection, which specialises in Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistani contemporary art. He is the curator of A.P. Santhanaraj (1932-2009): Modern & Contemporary Art from South India. ART: ‘The Madras College of Arts and Crafts, India (1850-Now)’. IMAGE: Installation View. 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

Interdisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada crafts stories of working-class migration experiences, unwrapping the influence of his mother and many other textile makers in his diaspora community in Birmingham. From large-scale textile works to prints and drawings, Osman Yousefzada’s practice considers representations and reimaginings of working class migration experience. Growing up in a British-Pakistani diaspora community in Birmingham in the 1980s, Yousefzada’s craft is grounded in his childhood experiences, watching his mother, ‘a maker’ of shalwar kameez and other textiles. A new exhibition at Charleston in Firle draws connections between these domestic, private spaces, the Bloomsbury group and fashion, and the artist’s public practice. We look at a new series of works on paper, on public display for the first time, inspired by characters in the Falnama, a book of omens used by fortune tellers in Iran, India and Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries. At the time, people seeking insight into the future would turn to a random page and interpret the text; Yousefzada transposes this to the present day, to tell stories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants, and recreate such talismans that protect or heal and work as guardians of the immigrant experience. The artist describes his large-scale textile series, Queer Feet, Afghan rugs, topped with ceramic works, and embroidered with found objects that reference Islamic and Asian design histories. We discuss his expanded, Sufistic, spiritual practice. We also consider the healing potential of museums, and the various media used by the artist in storytelling, with his book, The Go-Between (2022). Osman Yousefzada runs at Charleston in Firle until 14 April 2024. For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/osman-yousefzada-at-charleston-in-firle For more about the material power of embroidery, listen to curator Rachel Dedman on an UNRWA Dress from Ramallah, Palestine (1930s) at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and the Whitworth in Manchester, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/92c34d07be80fe43a8e328705a7d80cb WITH: Osman Yousefzada, interdisciplinary artist and research practitioner at the Royal College of Art, London. He is a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, and Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at the Birmingham School of Art. His first book, The Go-Between (2022), is published by Canongate. Alongside his solo exhibition at Charleston, he exhibits in group exhibitions including Embodiments of Memory at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and Design Museum’s REBEL, and his Migrant Godx can be found at Claridge’s Art Space, Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery, and soon, Camden Art Centre, as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. He will exhibit at the 60th Venice Biennale, and the V&A in London, in 2024. ART: ‘Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023)’. SOUNDS: ‘Home Grown - Osman Yousefzada x Selfridges’. 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

Curators Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson connect global environments and food practices, from guerrilla gardeners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to foragers in Palestine, challenging extractive, colonial approaches to land through contemporary art at the Eden Project in Cornwall. Artemisia afra – or African wormwood – is traditionally used as a medicine to prevent and treat malaria. This knowledge has long been passed down through generations and communities via music and craft, both marginalised in Western rational thought. In the 1970s, research to develop new anti-malarial drugs led to the discovery, extraction, and patenting of Artemisin - already used for two thousand years in China and Asia. Whilst still cultivated by some women’s cooperatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the plant, and its producers, have been continually suppressed and banned, by the Belgian colonial administration in the 19th century, to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Big Pharma businesses. With a multimedia installation of film, song, and tea tastings, Swiss artist Uriel Orlow seeks to platform these ongoing practices. He joins other contemporary artists in Acts of Gathering, a new exhibition at the Eden Project in Cornwall which explores how our relationship with food is linked with the land, environment, and labour that goes into its production. Harvest festivals in Homowo in Ghana and Guldize in Cornwall link the different practices of Serge Attukwei Clottey and Jonathan Baldock. Meanwhile, in Jumana Manna’s film FORAGERS (2022), we see how Israeli nature protection laws prohibit the foraging of native plants, alienating Palestinians from their land, and sustainable harvesting practices. Curators Misha Curson and Hannah Hooks connect traditions across cultures, acknowledging how human and planetary health are also entwined. We discuss legacies of extraction in science, botany, and renewed mining in Africa. Misha and Hannah suggest why some local methods are classed (and commodified) as sustainable, while others are marginalised by globalisation, industrial farming, and neoimperial hierarchies. Plus, we discuss the opportunities Eden presents for public participation, access, and activation as a non-conventional museum space, its position within the wider arts ecology of south-west England, and its own regeneration, as a former clay mine. Acts of Gathering runs at the Eden Project in Cornwall until 14 April 2024. For more, join EMPIRE LINES in conversation with artist Serge Attukwei Clottey at Reclaim - a weekend of talks and events at Eden, curated to support mental and planetary wellbeing - which takes place from 27-28 January 2024: edenproject.com/visit/whats-on/reclaim For more about the arts ecology of south-west England, hear curator Ashish Ghadiali on Radical Ecology’s recent exhibition at KARST in Plymouth, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3 And Morad Montazami, curator of the Casablanca Art School (1962-1987), currently at Tate St Ives in Cornwall: pod.link/1533637675/episode/db94bc51e697400326f308f6c6eaa3c6 For more on music, memory, and history, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7 And on the globalisation of 'African' masks, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410 WITH: Misha Curson and Hannah Hooks, Senior Arts Curator and Arts Curator at the Eden Project, Cornwall. ART: ‘Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020)’. SOUNDS: Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres. 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 Matthew Barrington marks 220 years since the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave uprising, unreeling how resistance continues with a series of films, from the first zombie horrors, to contemporary Caribbean and diasporic documentaries. The Caribbean island of Haiti is often reduced to binary representations, of the 18th century Haitian Revolution and its iconic leader, Toussaint Louverture, or environmental disasters, with the earthquake of 2010. But resistance has long been central to Haitian identities and the popular imagination - past and present. Since 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived on Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all attempted to ‘settle’ the land. The Revolution was the first and only successful uprising of self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in the island region of Saint-Domingue, a rebellion that still resounds across the islands and diasporas today - whether in the words of Naomi Osaka, or filmmakers like Esery Mondesir, who say ‘we’ve been screaming Black Lives Matter (#BLM) for over 200 years’. Marking 220 years since the Revolution, and formation of the first independent Black republic on 1 January 1804, Barbican Cinema curator Matthew Barrington shares some of the ways Haiti is depicted on screen. We cover 70 years of films, travelling from ‘exotic’ plantations to more everyday scenes, starting with Victor Halperin’s White Zombie (1932), which birthed the horror genre. Drawing on Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of factory owner Murder Legendre, and own othering, we discuss how such movies often sensationalised local spiritual practices as ‘superstitions’, and reinforced racial and gender hierarchies with their Western European-centric gaze. But they can also be read more subversively, in relation to colonialism, as evidence of forced labour, slavery, and capitalist extraction. We find similar tropes in gothic and body horrors, from vampires to killer plants, and connect with post-colonial landscapes across the Caribbean like Cuba. Contemporary filmmakers also grapple with the ‘ghosts’ of colonialism and capitalism. Matthew explains how the continued extraction of wealth from the islands, many of which were forced to pay reparations to their former enslavers, has perpetuated political instability, forcing many into exile or to migrate for economic opportunities. He shares classic films by Raoul Peck and Arnold Antonin, connecting with Third Cinema, and more experimental works by award-winning makers like Miryam Charles and Gessica Généus. Exploring the occupation and ongoing intervention by the US, and the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier in the 1970s and 1980s, we see how the distance of diasporas often creates the conditions for rebellion, protest, and radical community-building today, as well as pluralising perspectives of well-known landscapes, like New York City. Finally, we discuss the importance of art, visual culture, and Carnival in the context of this ongoing underdevelopment and high illiteracy rates in Haiti, and how public institutions like the National Portrait Gallery will mark this vital anniversary. Visions of Haiti ran at the Barbican Cinema in London throughout October 2023. WITH: Matthew Barrington, film curator and researcher. Matthew is the Manager of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image in London, a programmer for the Essay Film Festival and the London Korean Film Festival, and has worked with the Open City Documentary Festival. He is also a curator of cinema at the Barbican Centre, including the series, Visions of Haiti. ART: ‘White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)’. SOUNDS: ‘White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932)’. 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

Photographer Armet Francis documents African diasporic cultures across ‘The Black Triangle’, and captures the co-founding of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP, 35 years ago. For over four decades, Jamaican-British photographer Armet Francis has taken portraits that celebrate the resilience and survival of African diasporic cultures. Having immigrated with his family as a young child in the 1950s, he was part of the post-Windrush generation, acutely aware of his ‘cultural displacement’ and ‘political alienation’ as the only Black child in his school in London Docklands. Drawing on the transatlantic slave trade route, between Africa, the Americas, and Europe, Armet developed the idea of ‘The Black Triangle’ to guide his photographic practice from 1969, as a means to connect with the rich and diverse pan-African communities. Armet details his ‘social documentary’ approach, his experiences as one of the first Black photographers to shoot fashion, and how he challenged exotic tropes in commercial, white photography and advertising. He shares images of Notting Hill Carnival, Brixton Market, and tributes to those who protested the injustice of the New Cross Fire in 1981. Armet retells the unlikely story of taking Angela Davis’ photograph at the Keskidee Centre, his engagement with activists like Malcolm X and Stuart Hall, and how he had to ‘become Black’ before he could becoming politically conscious and active in civil rights movements. Armet was also the first Black photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in London when The Black Triangle series was exhibited there in 1983. Five years later, he co-founded the Association of Black Photographers, now Autograph ABP, where he has represented the series in 2023. To mark both anniversaries, he talks about what it was like founding the institution, working with the likes of David A Bailey, Mark Sealy, and Charlie Phillips, and his ongoing practice in the archives, keeping record of the important contributions - and canons - of British history. Armet Francis: Beyond The Black Triangle runs at Autograph ABP in London until 20 January 2024. Hear from many more artists and photographers who’ve worked with Autograph on EMPIRE LINES: Ingrid Pollard on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4 Curator Florence Ostende on Carrie Mae Weems’ series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–1996), at the Barbican in London: 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 Johny Pitts on Home is Not a Place (2021-Now) at The Photographers’ Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/70fd7f9adfd2e5e30b91dc77ee811613 John Akomfrah on Arcadia (2023) at The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/31cdf80a5d524e4f369140ef3283a6cd For more from Autograph’s contemporary programme, hear photographer Hélène Amouzou and curator Bindi Vora on Voyages (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a97c0ce53756ecaac99ffd0c24f8a870 WITH: Armet Francis, Jamaican-British photographer. He is a co-founder of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP. ART: ‘The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Editor: Nada Smiljanic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga moves between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil, sounding out colonial histories and contemporary migrant experiences through kizomba and kuduro music, in Whites Can Dance Too (2023). ‘It took being caught at a border without proper documents for me to realise I'd always been a prisoner of sorts.’ Kalaf Epalanga’s debut novel follows a young man migrating from Africa to Western Europe, when he is suddenly stopped on his journey and demanded his papers by the immigration police. Finding work in various jobs, he does soon find community - and freedom - in the dance clubs of the cities. Whites Can Dance Too is an invitation to ‘embrace the other’ and it's also a form of auto-fiction. Kalaf migrated from Angola to Portugal, the former a colony, known as Portuguese West Africa until 1951, which remained a province and state of the Portuguese Empire until 1975. First publishing in Portuguese, Kalaf details the legacies of this colonisation in contemporary culture, taking from the Latin tradition of writing the stream of consciousness, and challenging Anglophone standards with oral storytelling. Kalaf also talks about his relationship with translation - and why the English language edition is his favourite. Drawing on his background in electronic dance music, Kalaf relocates techno on the African continent, combining elements of the traditional African zouk and contemporary kuduro genres to design kizomba, or dance parties. We talk about sound as a vibration - a migration - which can articulate emotions and memories beyond words, and why curating exhibitions or DJ sets is a form of storytelling too. Traveling across continents, he shares some of his literary inspirations, from Ondjaki to Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and how he has connected with Afro-Brazilians since working in South America. We also discuss the relationship between diasporas in the Global South, and the importance of supporting cultural and literary industries. Whites Can Dance Too by Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn, is published by Faber, and available in all good bookshops and online. You can find Kalaf’s book playlist here, and the Kizomba Design Museum playlists here. For more artists practicing between Angola and Portugal, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, on Edson Chagas’ Tipo Passe series (2014) on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410 WITH: Kalaf Epalanga, Angolan musician and writer. Now based in Berlin, Germany, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. He fronted the Lisbon-based electronic dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, and founded the Kizomba Design Museum, which launched at the São Paulo Biennial 2023. He was also co-curator of Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library in London. Whites Can Dance Too is his debut novel. ART: ‘Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023)’. 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 Maha Ahmed reconnects Asian art forms along the Silk Road, migrating between traditional Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and imported Islamic ceramics. Where Worlds Meet captures both Maha Ahmed’s practice and life. Born in 1989 in Pakistan, she first studied Miniature Painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore from Imran Qureshi, pursuing her practice in that city, and also London, Tokyo, and Dubai, where she is currently based. Ahmed’s detailed paintings relate to her own migrations, each one populated with one or two birds in flight. Over time, her titles have shifted, from references to noise, towards solitude, emptiness, and meeting ‘a wall at every turn’. Ahmed speaks about her experience of isolation in Japan, and the loneliness shared by many during COVID lockdowns. But she also shares how Japan offered her many meeting points in her artistic journey, as displayed in her Leighton House exhibition. Maha’s miniatures draw from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts, and classical Japanese forms. Though historically-informed, her application of colour is wholly contemporary, with rich greens and blues lent from her time working at an illustration studio in Tokyo. She talks about about artistic exchanges between Asia and East Asia, and how woodblock prints, pigments, and dyes were often traded along the Silk Road, inspiring interdisciplinary and multimedia artworks. These are cultural histories which decentre and exclude Western Europe entirely, often absent in the art historical canon. The artist also combines historic and contemporary media; some are aged, with paint layered atop tea and coffee-stained paper, and some are stark and modern. She links back to London with ‘An Unfolding’ (2023), a work specially commissioned for Leighton House, which references the importance of colour in ‘non-representational’ art. Ahmed also details how she draws from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and how, as a Muslim, she feels ‘comfortable appropriating’ the colours of its 18th century Arab Hall, adorned with vivid ceramic tiles from Turkey and Greece, Egypt and Syria. Maha Ahmed: Where Worlds Meet runs at Leighton House in London until 3 March 2024. For more, you can read my article in recessed.space: recessed.space/00156-Maha-Ahmed-Leighton-House For more about Oneness (2022) at Leighton House, hear artist Shahrzad Ghaffari on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a8cb557e566005623d9ad59e8e0a3340 For more about Imran Qureshi, listen to Hammad Nasar in the EMPIRE LINES episode on Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009): pod.link/1533637675/episode/f6e05083a7ee933e33f15628b5f0f209 And read more about the exhibition, Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, at MK Gallery and The Box, in my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery WITH: Maha Ahmed, contemporary artist, whose works draw inspiration from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts and classical Japanese painting techniques. She has lived and worked in Lahore, London, and Tokyo, and is currently based in Dubai. She is represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London, and Galerie Isa in Dubai. ART: ‘Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. EDITOR: Luke Mathews. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth to Sharjah and Venice. The Columbian Exchange refers to the widespread transfer of plants, animals, goods, and people between the Americas, Afro-Eurasia and Europe - or the ‘Old’ and ‘New World’ - since the 1400s. With five screens, Arcadia considers these layered, overlapping journeys, travelling across stormy seas and sublime, epic landscapes. But these histories are also ‘interrupted’ with symbolic images of trade, disease, and smallpox, highlighting the fatal, often ‘genocidal’, nature of colonial encounters. Artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah talks about his intersectional, environmentally-engaged films, comparing previous works like Purple (2017) to this first ‘post-human project’. He connects historic viruses - often represented by Indigenous cultures in vivid oral and visual sources like Aztec codexes and ‘plague journals’ - with his experience producing during the COVID pandemic. Drawing on his work with the Black Audio Film Collective, John shares his collaborative, ‘democratic’ approach to filmmaking. And, 400 years since the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth to transport the Pilgrims to North America, we discuss the meaning of Arcadia’s immersive cinematic display for the port city today. John Akomfrah: Arcadia runs at The Box in Plymouth runs at The Box in Plymouth until 2 June 2024. He will represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale 2024⁠ in Italy from 20 April to 24 November 2024. For more on water and migration on film, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7 For more on sublime landscapes, listen to photographer David Sanya on the EMPIRE LINES episode about Lagos Soundscapes, Emeka Ogboh (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d WITH: Sir John Akomfrah CBE RA, British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), and now Smoking Dogs Films, with works including The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work recently on display at Tate Britain. Arcadia (2023), which premiered at the Sharjah Biennial 15 in the United Arab Emirates, is co-commissioned by The Box, Plymouth, Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam, and Sharjah Art Foundation. ART: ‘Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023)’. 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 Alice Wilke transports from Switzerland to sub-Saharan cities in Africa, tracing Carnival traditions across continents, via Carrie Mae Weems’ 20th century wallpapers, ceramic plates, and photographs. In 1993, the North American artist Carrie Mae Weems undertook a ‘pilgrimage’ to West Africa to discover her heritage. With photographs of historic architectures, former slave sites, and colonies, she seeks to retell histories about the origins of civilisation - but ones which also highlight her position as a contemporary artist practicing from a diaspora. As The Evidence of Things Not Seen - the final stop on Weems’ current ‘world tour’ of exhibitions - opens in Switzerland, curator Alice Wilke talks about how the show has changed from between the Barbican, in London, and Basel. Starting with the Missing Link series (2003), we consider the particular history of Carnival in Basel, a time of social and political critique, and tradition with unexpected connections to the Caribbean. We see how Weems relocates celebrated - and celebrity - Black women like Mary J. Blige in her practice, composing photographs like Baroque paintings to play on conventions of Western/European art, and keep stories alive through their retelling. Moving through Weems’ wider work, we consider the racism, internalised shadism, and hyper-visibility of Black people in society, and what European institutions haven’t yet seen, in their under-representation of POC artists. Carrie Mae Weems. The Evidence of Things Not Seen runs at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland until 7 April 2024. For more, you can read my article. Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100. Return to Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now at the Barbican in London, with curator Florence Ostende’s EMPIRE LINES episode on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-1996): pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da For more about Weems’ wallpapers, read about BLACK VENUS: Reclaiming Black Women in Visual Culture at Somerset House, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house For more about Dogon architecture in Africa, listen to Dr. Peter Clericuzio’s episode on The Great Mosque(s) of Djenné, Mali, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/079e9ccf333c54e7116ce0f9a6e7a70c WITH: Alice Wilke, assistant curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. She has worked as a research assistant at the city’s HGK FHNW Art Institute, where she supervised the podcast series Promise No Promises!, the Kunsthalle Göppingen, and the Museum Tinguely. She is the assistant curator of The Evidence of Things Not Seen, with curator Maja Wismer. ART: ‘Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993)’. 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 Hammad Nasar expands ideas of miniature painting, moving around South Asia and Western Europe from the 17th century to now, with Nusra Latif Qureshi’s 2009 digital print scroll, Did You Come Here To Find History? Beyond the Page, a touring exhibition of South Asian miniatures, is truly historic and historical. At its core are more than 180 detailed, small-scale works on paper, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the time when the Mughal Empire ruled over much of South Asia. But these miniature paintings are borrowed not from contemporary India or Pakistan, but the British Museum in London, the Tate and V&A, and the Royal Collection. So how did this wealth of South Asian miniature paintings come to be held (and hidden away) in Britain’s greatest collections – and what does it mean for this sheer quantity to be here now? Hammad Nasar, one of the exhibition’s curators, puts these works in conversation with those by leading contemporary artists from South Asia and its diasporas, including Hamra Abbas, Imran Qureshi, Shahzia Sikander, Khadim Ali, and Ali Kazim. We consider their practice across media, highlighting the different forms in which miniature practice lives and lives on, whether in sculpture, film, or architectural installations. Travelling along Nusra Latif Qureshi’s digital-printed scroll, we unpick the layers of portraits, from contemporary passport photographs, to traditional portraits from Venice and Mughal India. With a miniature painting of Saint Rabia, the first female saint in Sufi Islam, Hammad also highlights how women and the body have been represented in Islamic cultures, pluralising perspectives on the past. Connecting Britain and South Asia, we consider the foundation of the world-renowned Miniature Department of the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan, and how artists have long engaged with a range of non-Western/European media, including Japanese woodblock prints. Hammad defies the marginalisation of miniatures – due to their size, and ‘non-conventional’ means of distribution and display – suggesting that art markets and institutions must ‘grow up’ in their appreciation of the media. We also trace migrations and two-way flows, how courtly and Company paintings influenced well-known Dutch Masters like Rembrandt, to Anwar Jalal Shemza, a multidisciplinary artist of modernist and abstract works. Plus, Hammad talks about the ‘empire-shaped hole’ in British history, and why it is important that we share uncomfortable histories like the legacy of the East India Company to challenge the displacement of empire, as something that happened over there and then. ‍Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now runs at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes until 28 January 2024, then The Box in Plymouth in 2024. For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery. Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100. For more on contemporary miniature painting, hear contemporary artist Maha Ahmed on Where Worlds Meet (2023) at Leighton House in London, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/fef9477c4ce4adafc2a2dc82fbad82ab WITH: Hammad Nasar, curator, writer and researcher. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, where he co-leads the London, Asia Programme, and co-curator of the British Art Show 9 (2020–2022). He is the co-curator of Beyond the Page, an exhibition supported by the Bagri Foundation. ART: ‘Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009)’. 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