About Commissions Public Programme Credits Go to the Pavillion

Unseen Guests

is a commission of eight artists based in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), working across new media, audiovisual and writing to create new works in dialogue with the work of filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah, representing Great Britain at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale.

For the second edition of the Post-National Digital Pavilion, iniva presents Unseen Guests. The Pavilion is a series of radical re-imaginings of nationhood, reflecting on the entanglement between land and water, movement and m/otherlands, in the forging of new identities and subjectivities.

Unseen Guests invites eight artists to develop new works, including Ibiye Camp, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gladys Kalichini, Rodrigo Nava Ramírez, Shamica Ruddock and Helena Uambembe. Through an international open call, we have selected two writers: Yaa Addae and Alexis Teyie

Investigating histories embedded in cultural and environmental landscapes, and exploring their relationships with present geopolitical issues, Unseen Guests proposes artistic investigations alongside Pan-African cultural archives across the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on documentations of anticolonial events and testimonies of climate change.

Experimenting with elements that may not have been recognisable as significant, Unseen Guests commissions a series of artworks exploring archival material to identify connecting tissues between different narratives.

Unseen Guests is co-curated with Renée Akitelek Mboya and Beatriz Lobo Britto, and produced by Leanne Petersen.

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This project is funded by the British Council.

For the second edition of the Post-National Digital Pavilion, iniva presents Unseen Guests: a series of commissions of eight artists based in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), working across new media, audiovisual and writing to create new works in dialogue with the work of filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah, representing Great Britain at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale

The Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva) is an evolving visual arts organisation dedicated to nurturing and disseminating radical and emergent decolonising and unlearning practices centring Global Majority, Indigenous, African, Asian, Caribbean, Polynesian, Latinx & Diaspora perspectives that reflects on the social and political impact of globalisation.

The Pavilion is a series of radical re-imaginings of nationhood, reflecting on the entanglement between land and water, movement and m/otherlands, in the forging of new identities and subjectivities.

The project is supported by British Council.

Unseen Guests is curated by Beatriz Lobo Britto and Renée Akitelek Mboya, and produced by Leanne Petersen.

Artists developing new works include ibiye Camp, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gladys Kalichini, Rodrigo Nava Ramirez, Shamica Ruddock, Yaa Addae, Alexis G Teyie and Helena Uambembe.

Unseen Guest Project Team

Sepake Angiama - iniva Artistic Director
Beatriz Lobo - UK Curator
Renée Akitelek Mboya - SSA Curator
Leanne Petersen - Project Producer
Rodrigo Nava Ramirez - Web Development and Design

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