Thu 20 Aug, 6.30 - 9pm
Across the building
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| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
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Join artist Fozia Ismail and Orsod Malik, Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, for a conversation marking the final event in the A Song for the Xeedho public programme. Together, they will reflect on the themes that have emerged through the installation; from diasporic knowledge systems and oral tradition to archiving, counter-archiving and anticolonial practice.
Taking the xeedho as a starting point, the conversation will consider the knot not only as a material form, but as a way of thinking: about memory, inheritance, migration, women’s labour and the connections that hold communities across time and place.
Moderated by artist-producer Heather Marks, this conversation invites audiences into a reflective discussion on archives and other ways of remembering.
The evening continues with DJs, food, and drinks by Arawelo Studio.
This event is part of Backyard Biennial.
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.
Orsod Malik is a Sudani curator of exhibitions and archives, writer, independent researcher, and the Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation. He currently serves as a Trustee at The Common Guild, a visual arts organisation in Glasgow. Malik’s work explores transnational cultural and political entanglements in historical narratives to consider the possibility of shared histories. He is particularly interested in the relationship between social movements and aesthetics, and their combined role in shaping collective identities.
Malik’s latest project, Qissas, was recently shortlisted for the 2026 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize. He has also curated exhibitions and developed programmes for several cultural organisations including, the Stuart Hall Foundation, International Curators Forum (ICF), Black Cultural Archives, Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva), Prince Claus Fund and the British Council.
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.
Heather has produced cultural programmes and projects with organisations including Words of Colour, the Southbank Centre, Glasgow Film Theatre, Kiraathane and the Irish Writers Centre. She serves on the advisory board of Arawelo Studio.
