Zadie Xa in conversation with Tamar Clarke-Brown

Writer, artist and curator Tamar Clarke-Brown joined artist Zadie Xa in conversation ahead of Zadie's online showcase Moon Poetics 4 Courageous Earth Critters and Dangerous Day Dreamers, her new sound work for ASSEMBLY 2020.

Opening this year’s series, Zadie and Tamar discussed the processes, themes and influences behind the commission as they introduced Xa's six-part narrative composition, an audio piece that tells the story of animal kinship as a survival strategy to save an ailing planet, now available to listen to on assembly2020.co.

Loosely based on the Korean shamanic story of Princess Bari, Moon Poetics 4 Courageous Earth Critters and Dangerous Day Dreamers takes the audience on a guided journey through parallel dimensions, led by a host of creatures. Produced in collaboration with immersive sound agency Call & Response, the new work furthers Xa’s ongoing engagement with the powerful complexities of interspecies communication, matriarchal social structures and ancestral homelands.

About the speakers

Tamar Clarke-Brown 
Situating her practice within affective ecosystems and sites of hope, Tamar Clarke-Brown is a London based artist, curator and writer. Her interdisciplinary work is focused on experimental futurisms, intimate choreographies and diasporic practices. Tamar has worked with institutions including Serpentine Galleries, Autograph ABP and NTS Radio and presented at the ICA, South London Gallery, Tate Galleries, Somerset House, Kadist (Paris), Bard Berlin and more. Tamar contributes her writing to platforms including i-D, AQNB, gal-dem and independent artist publications, most recently co-editing the book The Slow Grind: Finding Your Way Back to Creative Balance (2020).  

 
Zadie Xa 
Through performance, video, painting and textiles, artist Zadie Xa explores the overlapping and conflation of cultures that inform self-identities and notions of self. Her layered textile works are sites for exploring contemporary identity construction and performance through cultural sampling, informed by her experience within the Asian diaspora. 

Throughout her practice, Xa uses water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, whilst also alluding to abstract notions of homeland. Recent solo exhibitions include Child of Magohalmi and the Echoes of Creation, a co-commission with Art Night, London, YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Tramway, Glasgow (2019) and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (2020). She has also staged performances at international galleries and festivals including Art Night London 2019, 58th Venice Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Block Universe and the Korean Cultural Centre UK.