In Conversation: Rudy Loewe and SA Smythe

Rudy Loewe (b.1987, they/them) lives and works in London, UK. They hold a BA in Illustration from the University of Brighton, UK (2010), an MFA in Visual Communication from Konstfack, Stockholm, SE (2018) and are currently working towards a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London. Loewe has exhibited internationally in institutions and galleries including: Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK: South London Gallery, London, UK; New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK; Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm, SE; Vallentuna Kulturhus, Stockholm, SE; Marabourparken, Sundbyberg, SE; Royal Academy, London, UK; Regart Centre D’Artistes En Art Actuel, Lévis, CA; DobraVaga, Ljubljana, SI; 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, London, UK; Staffordshire St, London, UK; Serpentine Galleries, London, UK. They have had public commissions including: LDN WMN billboard commissioned by Tate and the Mayor of London, London, UK; Becontree Forever schools project, commissioned by Barking & Dagenham council, London, UK; The Depths of Our History, Contemporary Art Space Project commissioned by Iniva and RSA Academies, UK; Black Women in History, Pen Store shop front window, Stockholm, SE; PROCESSIONS banner commissioned by Artichoke, London, UK; Draw Or Die! Grafikens Hus shop front window, Södertälje, SE. Residencies include: Ecologias Especulativas, Labverde, Brazil (2023); Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2023); Early Years Artists in Residence, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2020); Distributed Identities, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Canada (2019); We Dey, X Space, Austria (2019); The Bothy Project, Scotland (2019). Recent exhibitions include shows at VITRINE Fitzrovia, London, UK, Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, UK, PEER gallery, London UK and a public sculpture presentation in the Liverpool Biennial 2023, UK.

SA Smythe is a multi-instrumentalist, critical theorist, and transmedia storyteller and educator conjuring cartographies of black belonging. Their practice choreographs sound compositions, light sculptures, poetics, performance, and archival ephemera. Smythe has work featured in collaborative and solo performance exhibitions, film and multimedia installations, poetry anthologies, and in literary and performance festivals. They are a 2023-24 MacDowell Fellow in Multimedia Installation and recipient of the 2022 Rome Prize for Modern Italian Studies. They’ve recently held artist/composer residencies and presented soundscape, poetry and performance work Villa Lena (Tuscany), VCCA, Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and FADO Performance Art Centre in Toronto, BASE (Milan), the Bell Gallery (Brown Arts Institute), Berkeley Arts Centre (Berkeley), The Recovery Plan and Palazzino indiano arte/CANGO in Florence, GXRLSCHOOL (Los Angeles), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Africa Writes Literary Festival (2016 coheadliner, London), the Mattatoio Museum (Rome), and The Church (New York). Together with fellow Rome Prize winner (Visual Art) and MacDowell alum (Performance) Autumn Knight, SA Smythe is 1/2 of the multiscalar performance collective THEYFXRST. They are Assistant Professor of Black Studies & the Archive at the University of Toronto, where they direct the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis and mannish waters atelier.