Join the first Urgency of The Arts Assembly: I Need To Talk To You Urgently with guest speakers Abbas Zahedi, Legacy Russell, Shahzia Sikander & Tamu Nkiwane.
Each speaker, nominated by a current student from the School of Arts & Humanities at the RCA, will present an issue that is most important and most pressing to them right now.
Presentations will be followed by Q&A.
Legacy Russell – introduced by Alessandro Moroni
Legacy Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell holds an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. Russell’s written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally. Curated exhibitions and projects include LEAN (2020) featuring Justin Allen, Jen Everett, Devin Kenny, Kalup Linzy, Rene Matić, Sadé Mica, and Leilah Weinraub for Performa's Radical Broadcast; This Longing Vessel : Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2019-20 featuring E. Jane, Elliot Reed, and Naudline Pierre (2020); Projects: Garrett Bradley (2020) and Projects 110 : Michael Armitage (2019), organized with Thelma Golden and The Studio Museum in Harlem at MoMA; Dozie Kanu : Function (2019), Chloë Bass : Wayfinding (2019), and Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow, and a recipient of the 2021 Creative Capital Award. Her first book Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020) is published by Verso Books. Her second book, BLACK MEME, is forthcoming via Verso Books.
Abbas Zahedi – introduced by Hugo Hutchins
Abbas Zahedi’s interdisciplinary practice blends contemporary philosophy, poetics, and social dynamics with performance, sound, sculpture, and moving-image. With an emphasis on how personal and collective histories interweave, Zahedi makes connections whenever possible with people involved in the particular situations upon which he focuses, to invite others into the conversation.
Shahzia Sikander – introduced by Sonya Battla
Pioneering Pakistani American, Shahzia Sikander, one of the most influential artists working today, is widely celebrated for expanding and subverting pre-modern and classical Central and South-Asian miniature painting traditions and launching the form today known as the neo-miniature. By bringing traditional and historical practice into dialogue with contemporary international art practices, Sikander’s multivalent and investigative work examines colonial archives to readdress orientalist narratives in western art history. Interrogating ideas of language, trade, empire, and migration through imperial and feminist perspectives. Sikander’s paintings, video animations, mosaics and sculpture explore gender roles and sexuality, cultural identity, racial narratives, and colonial and postcolonial histories.
Tamu Nikiwane – introduced by Bess Barkholt Andersen
Recent solo exhibitions include Zabludowicz Collection 2018, London and National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo 2018. Selected performances and group exhibitions include Noise-quest w/ Graham Dunning 2020, London Short Film Festival - Regent ST. Cinema 2020, BBC New Creatives 2019, Artagon Site de Montmartre 2019, Kaunas Biennale 2019, ICA London 2019, White Crypt Gallery London 2018, Swansong 2018, Petites Serres Paris 2017, Café OTO 2017, London. Nkiwane holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London and is the recipient of the following awards: Villiers David Travel Award, Artagon III award and Leverhulme Scholarship and Lucy Halford Bursary Fund for Royal College of Art. SPACE Ilford Patrons & Friends Studio Bursary awarded for 2019.
Up and coming: Into the city 2021 (Hamburg)
Registration essential.
The event will be held via Zoom Webinar. Please note the link and password will be sent to attendees via email.
Zoom is a free online App which can be downloaded to your computer/laptop, phone or tablet via www.zoom.us.
The event will be live streamed on Twitch.
