Sat 15 Aug, 2-3pm
Clore Creative Studio
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our exhibitions as accessible as possible for every visitor. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
For complete access information about the gallery, please visit here.
Join researcher Ibrahim Hirsi and artist-producer Heather Marks for an open archive session exploring the research and sound archive behind Fozia Ismail’s A Song for the Xeedho.
This informal session offers a behind-the-scenes look at the recordings, questions and cultural histories informing the project. Ibrahim will share elements of his research into the xeedho — a Somali nomadic wedding vessel — and the oral traditions, songs, memories and forms of women’s knowledge connected to it.
Combining presentation, listening session and open conversation, the event invites audiences to think with the archive as a living, layered space: one shaped by sound, migration, craft, memory and what is passed between generations.
This event is part of Backyard Biennial.
Ibrahim Hirsi is a writer, archivist, and editor at Journal Gobanimo. He is a co-founder of Koor Archives and is currently working on his first monograph, which explores the metre of southern Somali poetic forms. His work has been published in The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, PBLJ, and the anthology Before Them, We (Flipped Eye, 2022).
Heather Marks is an artist, researcher and producer working across archives, film, literature and public programming. Her practice explores Black and Global Majority histories, with a focus on fugitivity, fabulation and decolonial practices of repair. She is currently in residence at the National Portrait Gallery, responding to portraits of 16th – 19th century Global Majority sitters in the Heinz Archive, and at The Box, Plymouth, researching unseen collections in the South West Film & Television Archive. Her moving image work Fugitives in the Archive has screened at Spike Island, Autograph ABP and Bristol Beacon.
Fozia Ismail is a British Somali artist, founder of Arawelo Eats and co-founder of dhaqan collective. Her practice moves across food, sound, textiles and found objects to create works exploring migration, climate, identity and diasporic memory.
Rooted in Somali nomadic feminist pedagogy, her work approaches everyday cultural practices as living archives of care, knowledge and survival. Through collective acts of listening, eating, weaving and making, she reframes domestic and communal space as sites of shared authorship. Central to her practice are inherited materials and objects connected to her mother’s Somali nomadic roots – vessels, spices, textiles, cassette tapes and sound recordings, which she transforms into sculptural, time-based and archival works.
Ismail has exhibited internationally at the British Textile Biennale, Southbank Centre, Biennale Architettura Venice, Weltmuseum Wien, Playable Cities, Osaka and Jodhpur Art Week.
A Song for the Xeedho – the Knot Makers is supported by Counterpoints Arts and Arts Council England.
Fozia Ismail – Instagram
