- Artists
Iniva and Stuart Hall Foundation are delighted to announce that artist, writer and educator Rosa-Johan Uddoh has been selected for the fourth Stuart Hall Library Artist’s Residency – a funded opportunity that builds on Professor Stuart Hall’s unique contribution to intellectual and cultural life. The residency will focus on research that underpins Uddoh’s work to understand and engage people in cultural issues around black performance in ‘postcolonial’ spaces.
Selected through an impressively competitive open call, the artist will begin her residency in May 2020. The jurors selected Uddoh for her ongoing interest in her practice concerning the construction of the performative act and characterisation in popular culture that produces the black or British subjectivity. Uddoh’s previous work has drawn on popular figures such as Moira Stuart, Hercule Poirot, Venus Williams, Una Marson.
During this time, Uddoh will focus on researching Stuart Hall’s lectures and other archival material available online. Uddoh explains that she will be “using the library resources to contextualise his charismatic presentations with performance art of the time.” She plans “to study Hall’s Open University lectures as performances for late-night television and his published papers as scripts. Exploring Hall as both performance theorist and performer himself, this research will culminate in a pantomime.”
Through this research, Uddoh will explore Hall’s commitment to disseminating knowledge through different media channels, which acquires a renewed sense of urgency in the context of the current global situation. A public event will be presented towards the end of the year.
The Stuart Hall Library Artist’s Residency is an annual funded opportunity established in partnership between Iniva and the Stuart Hall Foundation.
About Rosa-Johan Uddoh
Rosa-Johan Uddoh (b.1993, Croydon) is an interdisciplinary artist working towards radical self-love, inspired by black feminist practice and writing. Through performance, installation, ceramics, video and sound, she explores an infatuation with places, objects or celebrities in British popular culture, and the effects of these on self-formation.
Rosa studied Architecture BA at Cambridge University and MA Fine Art at The Slade (University College London) as a Sarabande Foundation scholar. Recently, Rosa has shown work at: Tate Modern, Jupiter Woods (solo), Black Tower Projects (solo), Nottingham Contemporary and New Contemporaries 2018. She is a Liverpool Biennial & John Moores University Fellow and a Lecturer in Performance at Central Saint Martins.
Instagram @rosa_johan
Image Credit: 'Performing Whitness 2: Mews', 2019, by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, co-produced with East London Cable.