Artist Libita Sibungu is developing new work which responds to the British Geological Survey archive at Keyworth, Nottinghamshire. The archive reflects the organisation’s colonial history, containing details of its many overseas operations through which potentially valuable mineral resources across the globe were meticulously mapped and recorded. Sibungu's project connects with her ongoing research into mining and its connections both with a wider colonial history and her own family history across Cornwall and Namibia. Responding to her immediate location in Penzance, Sibungu's research is focused on granite; considering its magmic formation and connections to ritual practices in counterpoint to the processes of scientific categorisation demanded by the archive. The project connects to a British Council funded collaboration between Radar and Johannesburg-based Visual Arts Network South Africa, as part of which Sibungu has co-curated - with Johannesburg-based artist Mkutaji Wa Nija -  a programme of talks by South African and Namibian artists which revealed the multifaceted ways in which personal and state archives surface and transform within their work.

Bio:

Libita Sibungu is a multidisciplinary artist based in West Cornwall, where she grew up with Namibian and English parents. ‘Quantum Ghost’ is Sibungu’s most recent and ambitious body of work - a lament to memory, following the trace of the artist's late fathers’ journey through exile in the 1980’s from Namibia to West Cornwall by way of mining. The work comprises a multi-channel audio installation and series of photograms and was presented as a solo exhibition with Gasworks and Spike Island in 2019. Sibungu is the 2022 Arts Foundation Future Award winner and Rolex Protege nominated artist. In 2020 Sibungu received the Henry Moore Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Award. She joined the Syllabus IV cohort in 2019. Sibungu is currently working on a series of new commissions with the Bristol Beacon and Bristol Music Trust and Hospital Rooms (UK) and will be in residence with the Newlyn Art Gallery and Exchange in partnership with Jerwood Arts later this year. Projects and performances of note have been presented with; Sonsbeek, Netherlands, and Temple Bar Gallery, Ireland (2021); Somerset House (UK) and Cabaret Voltaire, Switzerland, (2019); Eastside Projects (UK) and Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg (2018); South London Gallery and Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017).