Friday 20 October 2023 – Sunday 25 February 2024
10:00 am – 4:30 pm
We’re celebrating Black History Month this October. Join us as we look back at the accomplishments of people of colour, and honour their contributions to the history of Swansea.
Gebuza Nungu (22/07/1870-1949) was a resident of Pennard, Swansea in the 1930s until his death in 1949. He built a bungalow called The Kraal on East Cliff where he lived with his wife Mary Nungu. Read more…
The West Glamorgan area has been home to a diversity of communities over time. Some are well attested in the historical record, but others we only know about from fleeting references. Read more…
Friday 20 October 2023 – Sunday 25 February 2024
10:00 am – 4:30 pm
Presenting Partner: Bagri Foundation
Born and continues to live and work in Vietnam. Nguyễn Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based filmmaker and artist. Traversing boundaries between film and video art, installation and performance, her practice currently focuses on the power of sound and listening, and the multiple relations between image, sound, and space. Her work explores history, memory, representation, ecology, and the unknown.
At Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, Trinh Thi will re-present the critically acclaimed And They Die a Natural Death (2022), originally shown as part of Documenta 15 in 2022, here newly reconfigured for a gallery setting. In making the work, Trin Thi was inspired by the auto-biographical novel Tale Told in the Year 2000 (2000) by Bùi Ngọc Tấn, currently censored in Vietnam. Referencing a scene from the book, the work comprises a wind and wi-fi system set up in Vietnam’s Vinh Quang-Tam Da area that triggers the sculptural installation of fans, audiovisual effects, sound, chilli plants and the haunting playing of the sáo ôi flute, an Indigenous musical instrument used by groups in the Northern mountainous areas. In real time, an immersive shadowy forest on the gallery surrounding walls connects the space in Swansea to the Vietnamese woodland.
Nguyễn Trinh Thi, And They Die a Natural Death, 2022
Friday 20 October 2023 – Sunday 21 January 2024
10:00 am – 4:30 pm
Ncheta explores themes of remembrance, language and the personal and cultural importance of textiles. The work is one of the outcomes of a two-year project in collaboration with Artes Mundi, Aurora Trinity Collective and the Trinity Centre, co-produced by Ogechi Dimeke and Helen Clifford.
Aurora Trinity Collective hold weekly creative sessions in Cardiff that are a safe held space for women, including trans women, non-binary people and intersex people. Alongside this, they have a collaborative practice through which they create their own work. Many artists in the collective have lived experience as refugees and those seeking asylum in Wales, resulting in their work reflecting a rich and active engagement in cultural creativity. The work of the Collective often considers personal narratives, traditions and knowledges.
Ncheta incorporates textiles, photography and multi-channel audio, its multi-sensory nature reflecting the way the group work with one another; whilst not everyone shares the same language they create spaces for one another, finding rhythms of making together.
Dyed cotton muslin with members of Aurora Trinity Collective, 2023.
Photo, Amak Mahmoodian
Drawing on the letters of Dylan Thomas, the team at the Dylan Thomas Exhibition will explore the relationship between Swansea’s great poet and Meary James Tambimuttu, the Tamil poet and editor who founded Poetry London. In the exhibition’s series of blogs for Black History Month, they will examine Tambimuttu’s interesting life and work.
Check out the Dylan Thomas Exhibition blog, A Poem in the Chamber Pot:
For Black History Month, Swansea Museum is looking back to WW2. A number of Americans were stationed in Swansea and the surrounding area. We will be considering three Black Americans who were in Swansea for just a short period but who would become historically significant.
Authors of colour are writing more and more books as you’ll find by checking out the Black History Month book displays in Swansea Libraries this month, where you’ll also find an increasing range of books, both fiction and non-fiction, written about black people.
To get us reading more about people of colour, Swansea Libraries will also be compiling a list of recommended reads, featuring books in both English and Welsh languages.
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