Divine Southgate-Smith is a Togolese-British transdisciplinary artist and poet. Her practice explores archival poetics and material memory as frameworks to reimage how we record, remember, and relate to time. Through research-led inquiry, she examines the role of cultural memory in shaping imagination by considering the impact of institutional archives on the Black imaginary.
Speculation operates as a central method within her practice, enabling the reordering of archival and ethnographic materials to produce works that move fluidly between intimate storytelling and historical reworking. She approaches the archive not as a static repository but as a ‘temporal instrument’, an active site for generating Afro-diasporic counter-memories and envisioning futures rooted in Indigenous African knowledge systems. Her work persistently asks how we might imagine better futures
if we do not fully know, or cannot access, our pasts.
Divine Southgate-Smith’s solo exhibition, NAVIGATOR, opened at NiCOLETTi, London, in 2025, extending her exploration of archival imagery and spatial poetics. That same year, her work was acquired by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, where she previously exhibited in Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants & Narcotics, 2024.
Southgate-Smith was born in 1995 in Lomé, Togo, and currently lives and works in London, UK. In 2022, she/they received her/their Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools (The Royal Academy of Arts, London), having previously completed her/their undergraduate study in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (London, 2017).
She is currently working with the Living Cultures Collection at the Manchester Museum on ‘A Grammar of the Void’, 2025–ongoing, a participant-led project that explores continuity, material culture, and storytelling through publication.
Her publications include A Grammar of the Void, 2025, Reappropriating the Gaze, 2023, TEETH KISSIN’ Where Elephants Reside, 2022. In 2022, Southgate-Smith received her Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, Royal Academy of Arts, London, having previously completed her BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, 2017. She is the third place recipient of the Moziac Art Award, 2025, as well as a recipient of the East Gallery Fellowship, 2024.
Selected solo exhibitions include NAVIGATOR, NıCOLETTı, London, UK (2025); Aspects of Things Existing, Frieze London with NıCOLETTı (2024); Am I Porous or Imploding, EAST Gallery, Norwich University of the Arts, UK (2024); What I’ve Been Doing Lately, CEU open gallery, Budapest, organised and supported by The British council, as a part Photo Festival (2024); SPIT, Duo exhibition with Emmanuel Awuni, Public Gallery, London, UK; TEETH KISSIN’, Soup Gallery, London, UK (2023)
Selected group exhibitions include Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants & Narcotics, Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK (2024); Field of Difference, Palmer Gallery, London, UK (2024); The last train after the last train, PUBLIC Gallery, London, UK (2023); Globalisto: Fragments of a Community, curated by Mo Laudi, 31 PROJECT, Paris, FR (2023); Galerina x Arcadia Missa, Ways of Living 3.0, Arcadia Missa, London, UK (2023); DAWA, curated by Latif Samassi, 3537, Paris, FR (2023); The Ultimate Bootleg Experience, Studio Chappel, London, UK (2023); Of Mythic Worlds, curated by Harold Offeh, Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK (2022); 144, Reference Point, 180 Strand, London, UK (2022); FEŸ, Feÿ Arts, Château du Feÿ, Villecien, FR (2022); The Practice of Listening, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2022), FRENTE n2, Desterro, Lisbon, PT (2019); Europe Under Construction, SCHRILL, Braunschweig, DE (2019); (Putting words) in my mouth, Galeria Foco (2019), Mellifluous Elephant, Casa da Dona Laura, Lisbon, PT (2019); PADA STUDIO presents Capitulo, Auditório Municipal Augusto Cabrita (2019); Feedback, The Switch Gallery, Lisbon, PT (2019); and Dis (Places), Galeria Foco, Lisbon, PT (2018).
Southgate-Smith’s work is part of a number of permanent collections, including The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; Casa Do Design, Porto, PT; Lexus Private collection, Brussels, BE.
Award nominations include; Frame Awards (2021); Mullen LoweGroup Nova Award (2017); International Takifuji Art Award (2017); and The Art Academy Drawing Prize (2014).
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE PORTFOLIO
