Sekai Machache
An intimate exploration of African diaspora femininities ©

Sekai Machache

An intimate exploration of African diaspora femininities produced by Fòcas Scotland, in Scotland and Kenya, with two vibrant and thoughtful young cross-media Artists; Awuor Onyango (Nairobi, Kenya) and Sekai Machache (Dundee, Scotland).

Body of Land will build on the artists compelling visions to re-imagine the sacraments and symbols of East African and diaspora femininity for a digital age. Together, Onyango and Machache will engage ritual performance and play to explore the limits, joys, and possibilities of collective wisdom where the digital meets the traditional.

Machache and Onyango use lens-based media in distinct ways, making playful portraits, films and installations that re-imagine the real, mythic, and legendary encounters between Africa and its global Diasporas. Gravitating to the female subject, each traces a personal and cultural journey from subject to subjectivity, telling stories that celebrate what binds and splits the body, spirit, land, and social self across contemporary African identities at once rooted and displaced.

The British Council has awarded Body Of Land the new Art new Audiences grant.

They will work together in two residency phases, one in Scotland and one in Kenya, supported by Fòcas Scotland’s partners at Street Level Photoworks (Glasgow) Kuona Trust and the British Institute of East African Studies (Nairobi, Kenya). Their collaboration will be curated with and produced by Fòcas Scotland to be exhibited in Scotland and Kenya in 2019. Two young writers, Tiffany Boyle (Mother Tongue) and Kampire Bahana (Salooni Collective) will create critical and curatorial texts alongside Fòcas to accompany the new work.

Body of Land is produced by Fòcas Scotland in wider collaboration with Kuona Trust, British Institute of East African Studies and other arts organisations in East Africa.

Are you an East African Artist or Cultural practitioner? You can now apply for the Mobility East Africa Travel Grant. 

The grant is accessible to artists, cultural practitioners, researchers and curators looking to create new connections between the countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ethiopia.