The Divine Sky - Sekai Machache

Sekai Machache (she/they) is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self and she is interested in the relationship between spirituality, imagination and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing.

The three works exhibited in Gallery One were acquired by the Art Collection in 2024 and explore Sekai’s research into the colour blue and indigo dye processes used in Mali. This research in turn led to the creation of the photo series The Divine Sky, made in the early stages of the COVID-19 lockdown, where studio had to stand in for landscape. The Divine Sky tells the complicated history of lived and ancestral experience and reclaims space both physical and psychic.

Aspects of her photographic practice are formulated through digital studio-based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting to create images that appear to emerge from darkness.

In recent works, she expands to incorporate other media and approaches that can help to evoke that which is invisible and undocumented. She is interested in the relationship between spirituality, dreaming and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing against contexts of colonialism and loss.

Sekai is the recipient of the 2020 RSA Morton Award and is an artist in residence with the Talbot Rice Residency Programme 2021-2023. Most recently, Sekai represented Zimbabwe in the Venice Biennale.

Sekai works internationally and often collaboratively, for and with her community and is a founding and organising member of the Yon Afro Collective (YAC).

Visit Sekai Machache's website for further information.

About Human Experience

Each academic year, all of the Art Collection’s exhibitions, events and workshops are directly inspired by one of the University research themes.  In 2024-25 our chosen focus Human Experience will examine topics such as displacement, climate change, social deprivation and covid-19, highlighting the resilience of the human spirit and our ability to continue to create art through and about troubling times.

For details of outreach events being run alongside this theme and further information look on our what’s on page.

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