Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow, Scotland. Machache’s work brings together layers of drawing, performance, film and photography into photographic compositions that deeply interrogate the notion of self. Her practice is heavily influenced by African metaphysics and cosmology, ritual practice and performance, while her most recent project focuses on the Scottish landscape, Celtic folklore and Black Scottish Identity. Her series ‘Light/Deep Divine Sky’ shot in the Scottish Highlands, sees her outside of the studio and into the Scottish landscape. Even though she has lived in Scotland her whole life, she places herself in the rural landscape for the first time, in a deliberate act to reclaim a space where minoritised bodies are not usually associated with or welcomed into. Through a process of disseminating symbolic imagery, the work surfaces concerns around slavery, colonialism and the racial profile of rural Scotland.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022 Divination, Sakhile & Me Gallery, Frankfurt

2022 RSA Morton Award Showcase

2021 Addis Foto Fest 2020

2021 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair with Sakhile&Me

2021 Projects 20, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh Arts Festival

2021 Hypnagogia Glossolalia, Edwin Morgan Trust Centenary

2021 Body of Land, Street Level Photoworks Glasgow International Festival

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021 These Stories, House for an Art Lover, Glasgow International Festival

2019 Walking Through the Shadows Eyes Open, Subsolo Arte Laboratório, Campinas, SP

2019 Heavy Duty, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow

2019 Wyrd Operations – 3 of cups, Bread Arts Laboratory, Ayrshire

2019 See Me Scotland – All Entire Whole, New Glasgow Society, Edinburgh

2019 Alumni Residency Programme, DJCAD, Dundee

2018 Invocation, Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo Brazil, Feira Preta Festival

2018 Reson@te, Image Collective Gallery, Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh, Exhibition with Rape Crisis Scotland

2018 Alumni Residency Programme, DJCAD, Dundee

2018 Yon Afro Collective, Govanhill Baths, Glasgow International Festival

2017 Focas India: Document Shortlist Screening, SACAC, New Delhi

2017 Focas Scotland: Document Shortlist Exhibition, An Lanntair, Stornoway

2017 Ethics and Aesthetics: Living in a Material World, Kirkcaldy Museum,  St Andrews Museum

2015 Jill Todd Photographic Award, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh

AWARDS

2022 Emerging Artist Bridge Award

2022 Margaret Tait Award Nomination

2020 RSA Morton Award 2020

2019 WoW and Feira Preta Follow-up Fund - Brazil

2017/20 – (nAnA) Grant, British Council East Africa

2015 – Jill Todd Photographic Award – Commendation

RESIDENCIES

2021 Cove Park Residency

2022 PADA Residency Lisbon

2021 Hospitalfield Autumn Residency

2019 Death and Life Residency – Cachoeira Brazil 2018 – Body of Land Residency – Glasgow & Nairobi