Tawanda Appiah is invited to the Nordic Guest Studio by Mmabatho Thobejane. The two curators are both based in Sweden, Tawanda in Malmö and Mmabatho in Stockholm, and are in the midst of embarking on a collaborative curatorial practice through a research based process. During the residency they will spend time studying texts, writing, looking at visual and audio archives, and mapping out historical connections and disconnections between Sweden and Southern Africa. Their approach includes the close interrogation of the colonial past and present, and the creation of routes that allow for a plurality of artistic, scholarly and curatorial practices. The Guest Studio will act as their research site where they will use a method of intuition, curiosity, collaboration and experimentation. During their time in residency, their series of public gatherings, Sonic Insurrections, will premiere in Stockholm in collaboration with Tensta Konsthall. They will also run a workshop for the yearlong postmaster research-based course Decolonizing Architecture at the Royal Institute of Art.
Tawanda Appiah is a Zimbabwean independent curator, researcher and writer based in Malmö. He is part of Njelele Art Station and previously worked as a co-curator at Skånes konstförening and Curator of Education & Public Programming at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. In 2021 he co-curated the GIBCA Extended exhibition – Comforting the machine. Other projects and interventions include No Country Like (Skånes konstförening, 2018); Better Safe and Sorry (Moderna Museet, 2018); On Practices (Malmö Konsthall and Skånes konstförening, 2019); To Where Are We Beautifully Going? (2020); in(visible) (Malmö Konstmuseum, 2021). Appiah sits on various boards including Paletten Art Journal.
Mmabatho Thobejane (she/her) is a curator, producer and writer currently based in Stockholm. She graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BCom (Finance and Economics) in 2016 and a BA(Hons) in Curatorship in 2017. She received a Masters in Curating from Stockholm University in 2021. She currently splits her time between being the process leader and curator at Grafikens Hus, for the project Samlande Tankar/Collecting Thoughts, and being a producer at MDT. Her curatorial practice focuses on centering Black creative practices and her writing practice centers and excavates Black Indigenous knowing, sense and unfolding.