A public in-conversation event with celebrated architect, Sumayya Vally, and the distinguished curator, Ekow Eshun. They will be discussing the theme of referentiality through their latest works, including, respectively, the Asiat-Darse Project (Belgium) and the Islamic Arts Biennale (Saudi Arabia) and In the Black Fantastic (UK) and The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure opening next year at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Ekow Eshun is a Ghanaian-British writer, editor and curator. Eshun studied politics and history at the London School of Economics, where he began editing the arts and features section for the University’s weekly newspaper. He has been the editor of numerous magazines, including Tank, Arena and Mined. He was Artistic and Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2005-10), during which time visitors rose by 38%. He holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University and is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing London’s most significant public art programme. He writes frequently for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, The Face and the Observer. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 arts shows Saturday Review and Front Row. Eshun’s Orwell Prize-nominated memoir, Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa (2005) explores issues of race and identity. Most recently, he authored In the Black Fantastic and Africa State of Mind, which was nominated for the Lucie Photo Book Prize. In 2016, he curated a group exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, London exploring the identity of the black dandy, Made You Look: Dandyism and Black Masculinity. In 2017, he edited the publication Africa Modern: Creating the Contemporary Art of a Continent, which marked the opening of Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. Eshun is also Chairman of Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, and Creative Director of the arts space Calvert 22 Foundation, for which he has instigated an award-winning online magazine, The Calvert Journal. Described as a ‘cultural polymath’ by The Guardian he is the presenter of documentaries including the BBC film Dark Matter: A History of the Afrofuture. He has contributed to books on artists including Mark Bradford, Kehinde Wiley, Chris Ofili, John Akomfrah and Wangechi Mutu, and his  writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Esquire and Wired. 

Sumayya Vally is a Muslim, South African architect, and the founder and principal of the architecture and research firm, Counterspace. It is based between Johannesburg, South Africa, and London, United Kingdom. She is the Honorary Professor of Practice at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Since graduating with honours from the University of the Witwatersrand’s M.Arch Architecture programme, Sumayya Vally has built a global career and reputation as an architect, advocate, ambassador, design leader and teacher, using a multidisciplinary approach to architectural practice to confront increasingly complex social and ecological challenges. As a female Muslim practitioner from the Global South, her success in a sector that still has a long way to go to achieve racial, social and gender equity tells a hopeful story about the possibilities for the industry, and aligns with UCL and The Bartlett’s core values and vision for the present and future of teaching and professional practice. As Principal of her Johannesburg-based design/research studio Counterspace, she designed the 20th Serpentine Pavilion (2020/2021) – the youngest ever architect to receive this commission, her design drew reference from the experiences of London’s migrant communities. In 2021 she was the only architect on The Time100 Next List. The list, which gathers emerging leaders, pioneers and creators ‘poised to make history’, identified her as ‘shaping the future of the architectural canon and practice’. She is the Artistic Director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in the Middle East, which is open now through 23 April 2023, and she is collaborating on the design of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia, the first presidential library dedicated to a female head of state. Sumayya also taught at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, leading the Master’s programme’s Unit 12 design studio, founded on an intent to create a curriculum for the African continent. She has lectured widely and is frequently an invited speaker in prestigious art and architecture institutions globally, most recently Harvard University and Royal College of Art.