in transit under another sky

Suki Dhanda, Untitled, C-type mounted on aluminium, 2002. Courtesy / Credit: Photo © British Council Collection.

Since 2024, E.N. Mirembe and Rosie Olang’ Odhiambo have worked together to co-curate in transit under another sky as a part of the British Council’s Art Exchange Moving Image Programme.

For Coventry Biennial 2025, with the continued support of the British Council, E.N. Mirembe and Rosie Olang’ Odhiambo present a further iteration of this exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum drawing together artworks from the British Council Collection with artworks and projects by a range of artists and researchers from their personal and professional networks.

in transit under another sky in Coventry will highlight and expound on the work of novelist Yvonne Vera whose words have been borrowed for the title of this exhibition. This is a curatorial response to Coventry Biennial’s wider interest in “obsessions”. Between 1997 and 2003, Yvonne Vera was the director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare and re-staging this exhibition provides an opportunity for a deeper engagement with her work.

In Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats Yvonne Vera wrote:

“I was born and raised in Bulawayo. It is the second city so to speak in Zimbabwe. Each of the inhabitants here feels a certain marginal identity, and therefore an irrational and fierce love for being here. . . In all my time in Canada, I never lost its heartbeat, and I was never complete. . . Finally, I had to be me, no longer in transit under another sky … I have never wanted to be a writer in exile. I hope to never have to make a decision to leave Zimbabwe, for whatever reason. I hope to continue in this small town, with its gentle and unhurried pace.”

Previous presentations of this exhibition have happened at Afropocene StudioLab in Kampala (Uganda), Kamene Artist Residency in Nairobi (Kenya) and at The Africa Center in London (UK).

In Coventry, the project takes a new inflection. It primarily turns to the British Council Collection at a moment when the collection itself is in motion, relocating from London to Coventry. This migration becomes part of the exhibition’s story; art as something continually moved and moving, geographically and affectively.

Coventry, like Bulawayo is not the centre, a mirroring of Yvonne Vera’s desire to situate herself on the margin looking in.

– –

in transit under another sky is supported by the British Council.

 

← Back to exhibitions