Todmorden-based multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie (b.1982) creates Afrofuturist speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music and multi-sensory installations. She proposes new myths, rituals and provocations for radical change and radical transformation of the self and community, drawing from science fiction, Black Atlantic ritual cultures, biophilia, neuroscience, electronic music, and her own neurodiversity and Nigerian heritage.
Nwando’s critically-acclaimed works include the multimedia installation Distorted Constellations, left-field pop persona Lady Vendredi (a blaxploitation heroine from another dimension) and ecstatic operatic experience Hildegard: Visions. She has been commissioned by and have had her works shown across the UK and internationally, including the Barbican, Brighton Festival, Science Gallery Melbourne, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Southbank Centre, BALTIC, Site Gallery, Humber Street Gallery, Rio de Janeiro’s Tempo Festival, London Sinfonietta, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Zurich’s Blok.
Later this year, her debut album The Swan – a genre-bending work of sonic fiction mythologising an imagined matriarchal community – will be released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records, with the single ‘I Seduce’ out in May 2021.
For our Summer Programme, Nwando Ebizie will present an immersive binaural sound work ‘The Garden of Circular Paths’. This work will take visitors on a sonic art journey through the life and work of Barbara Hepworth. A ritual guided journey, it features composed music and field recordings from places around Yorkshire and Cornwall which have a connection to Barbara Hepworth. The installation is designed for headphone listening whilst walking through Hepworth’s retrospective at the gallery, allowing visitors to experience it through Ebizie’s lens as a Yorkshire-dwelling Afrofuturist.
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