https://www.phf.org.uk/artist/libita-sibungu/
Libita Sibungu (born 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist working with writing, performance, photography, print and sound to build environments that weave decolonial narratives into immersive installations and poetic arrangements. Through storytelling Sibungu connects her familial history with political movements, and wider collective memories and cosmologies to amplify displaced, buried and marginalised voices.
Quantum Ghost (2019) is Sibungu’s most recent and ambitious body of work following her late father’s journey through exile in the 1980s, from Namibia to West Cornwall as a student of mining engineering. Presented as a solo exhibition in conjunction with Gasworks and Spike Island, comprising an audio installation and series of 10 large scale photograms, depicting field notes of voice memos, field recordings, archival material, and minerals from the mining regions of her heritage. This ongoing body of work is conceived as a lament to memory and sequence of phases through birth, death and rebirth.
Sibungu is the 2022 Arts Foundation Future Award winner and a Rolex Protégé nominated artist. Projects and performances of note have been presented with; Sonsbeek, Netherlands, and Temple Bar Gallery, Ireland (2021); Somerset House, London, and Cabaret Voltaire, Switzerland, (2019); Eastside Projects, Birmingham, and Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg (2018); South London Gallery and Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017).
Presently, Sibungu is working on a series of new commissions with the Bristol Beacon &
Bristol Music Trust, Hospital Rooms, and Loughborough University, and is artist in residence with Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange in association with Jerwood Arts.
The award is a timely blessing, it will support me as an artworker and mother to continue to build a sustainable art practice which centres holistic healing methodologies. Whilst helping me to develop connections between the UK and Southern Africa, through experimental sonic and performative collaborations. It’s important that I can invest in slow processes that guide me towards new ambitious presentations, nationally and internationally.
Performance still. Presented as part of Are we bodies, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 2019. Originally commissioned for the group exhibition 4717, curated by CCA Glasgow as a live transmission into the LUX collection, Royal College of Art, Dyson Gallery, London, 2018.
Installation view from solo exhibition at Spike Island, 2019. Image depicts a cob entrance to the audio installation made of clay straw and sand over timber and chicken wire frame. Originally exhibited at Gasworks, London, 2019, and also toured to Spike Island, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, and Sonsbeek, Netherlands, 2021.
Installation view from solo exhibition at Spike Island, 2019. Image depicts an immersive sound installation consisting of red lighting, 27 tons of Cornish granite gravel and a multi-channel five speaker and sub bass 21 minute looped audio piece. Originally exhibited at Gasworks, London, 2019, and also toured to Spike Island, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, and Sonsbeek, Netherlands, 2021.
Performance documentation, duration 1.5 Hours (extract 37 seconds). Presented at Jamaican Pulse, RWA, Bristol, 2016. Elements of the performance were recorded and installed at the Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017.