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Welcome to Sethembile Msezane, artist-in-residence at Central Saint Martins

Figure wearing head scarf
  • Written byInternal Communications
  • Published date 06 June 2022
Figure wearing head scarf

South African artist Sethembile Msezane will be collaborating with students and archives across UAL to create a performance that explores water as a site of sustainable knowledge. 

From May to July, Msezane will be working with staff and students across UAL on work that will culminate in performances at both the Lethaby Gallery and the Barbican. The project is focused meanings of water as life-sustaining within ecosystems, but also within wider systems of indigenous knowledges and histories of colonial extraction and pollution.

Msezane will work with institutional archives at CSM Museum and Study Collection to inspire her digital filmed performance supported by The Bluecoat in Liverpool. She will then collaborate with students from BA Performance: Design and Practice at CSM and BA Acting and Performance at Wimbledon College of Arts. In late July, the artist and students will transform the Lethaby Gallery into a live studio to devise the final performance within a public space.

What started off as an idea for a workshop has blossomed into a fully-fledged filmic performance. With a dedicated team and a flurry of planned activities in producing this work; I'm hoping for still moments in the stories of the people who will help capture, move and inspire us all.

— Sethembile Msezane

This project has relied of collaborative work across disciplines and Colleges and is made possible by Mike Calandra Achode, Graphic Communication Design at CSM, Janine Francois, UAL Governor and Lead Academic, Kane Husbands, BA Performance: Design and Practice at CSM and Stella Odunlami, BA Acting and Performance, Wimbledon.

At the start of the project, Janine Francois says: “We are incredibly excited to have Sethembile join us at CSM on what sets out to be an exciting project bridging together teaching, professional and creative practices that responds to some of our most urgent and current social issues.”

This project is funded by Central Saint Martins, the British Council and Arts Council along with in-kind support from our partners.