Artists on Research

Shiraz Bayjoo is a contemporary multi-disciplinary artist who works with film, painting, photography, performance and installation. His research-based practice focuses on personal and public archives addressing cultural memory and postcolonial nationhood in a manner that challenges dominant cultural narratives. Shiraz has exhibited with the Gropius Bau, Berlin; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Institute of International Visual Arts, London; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; 5th Edition Dhaka Art Summit; Sharjah Biennial 14; 13th Dakar Biennale; and 21st Biennale of Sydney. He is a recipient of the Gasworks Fellowship and was commissioned for Art Night 2019, London. He was an artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation in 2021 and was awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Shiraz presented a solo exhibition at the Diaspora Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and the Sharjah Biennial 15 in 2023. For the eighth edition of Colomboscope in 2024, he presented newly commissioned works supported by the British Council.

Sria Chatterjee is Head of Research Initiatives at the Paul Mellon Centre. Sria’s research interests lie at the intersection of art, science and environment and she publishes extensively on these topics. Sria leads the multi-year Climate & Colonialism research project at the Paul Mellon Centre. In 2020, she founded and led the award-winning digital project, Visualizing the Virus.

Before coming to the Paul Mellon Centre, Sria was a fellow at the Max-Planck Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and an advanced researcher at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland, where she held a Swiss National Science Foundation fellowship. She served as a contributing editor for British Art Studies from 2020–22 and remains involved in the journal as Editorial Advisor. In 2024, Sria is on research leave from the Paul Mellon Centre on a fellowship at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. In 2023, Sria served as a judge for the Pen Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical non-fiction. Sria received her PhD from the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University in 2019.

Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme, and the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Described by Vogue as “the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain”, he has staged acclaimed exhibitions internationally and is a contributor to publications including Vogue, the New York Times, Financial Times and the Guardian. He is the author of books including, most recently, The Strangers, longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Jhalak Prize, and Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art. He was a judge for the Turner Prize 2024 and a member of the jury for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. 

Wesley Goatley’s work critically interrogates the myths and manipulations of the AI and technology industry and its relations to society, geopolitics and the climate crisis, and how art practice can intervene. This research intersects with practice through his experimental works with low-carbon computation, anti-captialist AI practice, localhosting and other socio-technical practices of thoughtful computation. 

His installations, performances and films have been shown at international venues including: Eyebeam in New York; Berghain in Berlin; the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 

He holds a doctorate in creative and critical practice from University of Sussex and is Programme Director of Interaction Design and Visual Communication at University of the Arts London, where he is co-founder of the Critical Climate Computing research group. 

Sophia Yadong Hao is Director & Principal Curator of Cooper Gallery, University of Dundee. Working internationally, Sophia characterises the curatorial as a rhizomatic praxis capable of transforming exhibition making into a testing ground for radical futures. 

Notable curatorial projects include NOTES on a return (2009), a re-contextualisation of performance art from 1980s Britain; Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (2016–2017) that evokes the ethos of feminism for an alternative politics in culture and society; and CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland (2015–2021), a four-phase international exhibition programme that interrogates contemporaneity in a global capitalist context. Since 2021, Sophia has initiated and realised The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins Towards Creative Emancipation, a five-phase exhibition programme examining histories and future possibilities of creative pedagogy as a radical emancipatory praxis. 

Sophia is founding editor of the digital publication What I am Reading Now…, her publications include Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? (Sternberg Press, 2019); Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Remoteness (Sternberg Press, 2016); A CUT A SCRATCH A SCORE (2015); and NOTES on a return (2010). 

Sophia was named one of The List’s Hot 100: A celebration of the most influential contributors to Scottish culture 2024.

Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan (Maasai Kikuyu) visual artist, filmmaker and writer whose artworks are concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world. Her films and videos, textiles, photography, performances, paintings and architectural spaces have been widely exhibited, most recently in her mid-career survey entitled Healing The Museum at S.M.A.K. Ghent in 2023.  

Other recent solo exhibitions and projects include Page Not Found, The Hague (2025); Kate MacGarry, London (2023); Fotomuseum, Antwerp (2023); and Wellcome Collection, London (2023). Recent group shows include Lyon Biennale (2024); Kettles Yard (2023); Migros, Zurich (2023); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2022); British Art Show (2021–2023); Coventry Biennial (2021); and Nottingham Contemporary (2021). 

Grace is a winner of the Jarman Award in association with Film London (2022) and recipient of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Visual Arts Award (2024). Her award-winning films have been screened at international film festivals such as the 72nd Berlinale, FID Marseille and BFI London Film Festival.  

Her work has been featured in Artforum, Art Review, the Guardian, TIME Magazine, the Financial Times, Elephant, BOMB, Mousse, Art Monthly, Metropolis M, Phaidon: The 21st Century Art Book, Apollo Magazine 40 under 40 list and BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour. 

Her writing has been published by TATE, Migros Museum, Bergen Kunsthall, Whitechapel Gallery: Documents of Contemporary Art, The Paris Review, Le Journal Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, Animal Shelter Journal Semiotext(e) MIT Press, Metropolis M art magazine and Oxford University Press.

Barbadian-Scottish Multidisciplinary Artist Working in Film, Sculpture, Print, Installation and Performance.

Alberta Whittle lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She received her PhD from Edinburgh College of Art in 2024 and is a current research associate at The University of Johannesburg. Alberta represented Scotland at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022) and has been the recipient of a Turner Bursary, Frieze Artist Award and a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award.  

Alberta’s expansive practice encompasses drawing, digital collage, film and video installation, sculpture, performance and writing. Grounded in research, her work considers historic and contemporary expressions of Anti-Blackness, colonialism and migration. Weaving together networks of ancestral knowledge and future possibilities, Alberta explores manifestations of resistance through community, compassion and collective care.  

Her extensive range of exhibitions include: solo presentations at Nicola Vassell, New York (2025); Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute (2024); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2024, with Dominique White); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2023); Holburne Museum, Bath (2023); Scotland + Venice, 59th Venice Biennale (2022); University of Johannesburg Gallery, Johannesburg (2021); Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2021); Glasgow International (2021); Grand Union, Birmingham (2020); and Dundee Contemporary Arts (2019).