Artist Talk: Grace Ndiritu
This is an edited recording of an evening exploring the artistic practice of Grace Ndiritu, one of the artists involved in our exhibition Our Silver City, 2094, in conversation with climate psychologist Rebecca Nestor. In this talk, Ndiritu discusses her spiritual practice of healing in her work as a contemporary visual artist, as well as her experiences of living in alternative and indigenous communities, as a way of thinking through issues of climate trauma and ecological activism.
Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan artist whose artworks are concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world. Works including The Ark: Center for Interdisciplinary Experimentation; COVERSLUT© fashion and economic project; and performance art series, Healing The Museum, have been shown around the world since 2012. Recently, her debut short film Black Beauty has been selected for prestigious film festivals including 72nd Berlinale in the Forum Expanded section (2022) and 32nd FIDMarseille (2021). Ndiritu has been featured in TIME magazine, Phaidon’s The 21st Century Art Book, BOMB magazine, Art Monthly and Elephant magazine. Her work is housed in museum collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The British Council and The Modern Art Museum (Warsaw). Her writing has been published in her critical theory book Dissent Without Modification (Bergen Kunsthall) in 2021; The Whitechapel Gallery in the Documents of Contemporary Art anthology series; Animal Shelter Journal, Semiotext(e) The MIT Press; Metropolis M; and The Oxford University Press.
Rebecca Nestor is an organisational consultant, facilitator, and coach with a particular focus on supporting people and organisations with the emotional impacts of the climate and ecological crisis. Her consultancy specialises in helping people process the feelings that are evoked by working on the climate crisis, whether as sustainability professionals within organisations, or as campaigning groups and NGOs, or simply as citizens. She is a board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and has recently completed postgraduate research into leadership in climate change organisations.