ARTIST #3: SEKAI MACHACHE
After an exceptionally challenging period for the creative sector, Edinburgh Art Festival makes a welcome return in 2021, with over 35 exhibitions and new commissions in visual art spaces across the city complemented by an online programme of events and digital presentations. Edinburgh Art Festival continues to champion the city’s vibrant visual arts community and we are delighted to support them in doing so by presenting this weekly showcase, produced alongside the festival and featuring work by early career artists taking part in this year’s edition.
Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean-scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow. Her work is rooted in a deep interrogation of the notion of self and she is interested in the relationship between spirituality, imagination and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing.
Machache works with a wide range of media including photography. Her photographic practice is formulated through digital studio-based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting conditions, creating images that appear to emerge from darkness.
For this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, Machache will present a series called The Divine Sky, which utilises allegory and performance to tell a complicated history through immersive storytelling and photography. This series took form during the Covid-19 lockdown period, when restrictions called for new ways of working and structuring artistic output. This work also denotes a process of inscribing and re-inscribing thought through automatic drawing with ink on paper, indigo pigment on fabric, performance to camera, layering and overlaying.
The artist is the recipient of the 2020 RSA Morton Award and will be joining the 2021-2023 Talbot Rice Residency Programme. Machache is also presenting as part of RESET (group show) – a show which will coincide with Alberta Whittle’s solo exhibition, RESET at Jupiter Artland as part of the festival.
The Divine Sky by Sekai Machache is at Stills, Edinburgh, from 29 July until 18 September, Tuesday to Saturday, see www. edinburghartfestival.com