Gladys Kalichini Back

Gladys Kalichini is a contemporary visual artist and researcher from Lusaka, Zambia. Her work centres around notions of erasure, memory, and representations and visibilities of women primarily in colonial resistance histories. She completed her Master of Fine Art degree in 2018 from Rhodes University and later graduated in 2023 with a doctorate in Art History.

Kalichini is a member of the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research programme, supported by the Andrew. W. Mellon foundation and the National Research Fund. She is the 2022 main prize winner for the Henrike Grohs Art Award and a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award. She has participated in the revolving art school known as Àsìkò in 2015 when it was hosted in Mozambique. She has participated in projects such as the second iteration of the “Women On Aeroplanes” project in Lagos, Nigeria in 2018 themed “Search Research: Looking for Collete Omogbai”. Selected residencies that she has participated in include the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, USA in 2017, Künstlerhaus Bethanien international studio programme in Berlin, Germany in 2019/2020, supported by the KFW – Stiftung and a fellowship at the Victoria College of Arts (Melbourne University) in Australia in 2024.

uyu mukate upela ubumi (this bread gives life)
2024

uyu mukate upela ubumi (this bread gives life) by Gladys Kalichini is a multi-channel video work that delves into the sacred and mnemonic properties of water, particularly within the context of cleansing rituals. Drawing from one of the hymns sung during the administration of holy communion, where water is used to wash away impurities, Kalichini reimagines the concept of an archive—not merely as a physical repository of historical documents but as a fluid, ever-shifting vessel of memory. This work asks whether water can hold memory and what it means for an archive to contain not just truths, but myths, half-truths, forgotten narratives, and the unspoken secrets of sacred knowledge. Through this lens, water becomes both a medium and a metaphor for the stories that shape and transcend individual and collective histories.

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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