Art, Architecture and Community: Ibrahim Mahama, Sumayya Vally and The Whitworth
This event happened 7 July 2021
theVOV is joined by Artist Ibrahim Mahama, Architect Sumayya Vally, Alistair Hudson Director of The Whitworth and Senior Curator at the Whitworth Dominique Heyse-Moore, as they explore the ways in which we interact with art and architecture and the potential of designed spaces as catalysts for social engagement. Moderated by Director of The Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery, Alistair Hudson.
Renowned artist Ibrahim Mahama will join live from his Parliament of Ghosts in Tamale, Ghana which was the centre-point of the Whitworth’s exhibition on the artist as part of the Manchester International Festival 2019.
Sumayya Vally (b. 1990, South Africa) carries obsession for Johannesburg and her work around narrative, identity and memory in the city have admitted her into a host of conceptual and investigatory projects, including a position as assistant curator and film producer for La Biennale di Venezia 2014 (South African Pavilion). Sumayya has recently been selected as a finalist (top 3) for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation architecture residency prize (2019) and was a finalist for the Rolex Mentorship and Protege award (2018/2019). She was recently named to the TIME100 Next list celebrating as one the world’s leaders primed to shape the future.
Sumayya’s design, research and pedagogical practice is committed to finding expression for hybrid identities and contested territories. She is in love with Johannesburg. It serves as her laboratory for finding speculative histories, futures, archaeologies, and design languages; with the intent to reveal the invisible. Her work is often forensic, and draws on performance, the supernatural, the wayward and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. She is presently based between Johannesburg and London as the lead designer for the Serpentine Pavilion 2020/1.
Alistair Hudson was appointed Director of The Whitworth and Manchester Art Galleries in 2018. Here he is developing a new vision and mission based on the history of these institutions and their social imperative.From 2014 to 2018 he was director of MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where he implemented a vision based on the concept of the Useful Museum, as an institution dedicated to the promotion of art as a tool for education and social change. For the preceding ten years he was Deputy Director of Grizedale Arts in Coniston in the Lake District, which gained critical acclaim for its radical approaches to working with artists and communities, based on the idea that art should be useful and not just an object of contemplation.He is co-director of the Asociación de Arte Útil with the artist Tania Bruguera – an expansive international project and online archive.
Dominique Heyse-Moore is Acting Head of Exhibitions and Collections at the Whitworth, The University of Manchester. She works across the programme and collection, with particular responsibility for textiles and wallpaper, with a focus on decolonisation activities. Dominique was lead curator of Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts exhibition at the Whitworth in 2019, co-commissioned with Manchester International Festival.
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