Biography

Divine Southgate-Smith is a Togolese-British transdisciplinary artist and poet based in London. Her medium non-specific practice explores archival poetics and material memory as frameworks for reimagining how we record, remember, and relate to time. Her research examines the contemporary impact of institutional archives on the Black imaginary, drawing on Black Indigenous perspectives and weaving together historical, personal, and folkloric narratives.

Speculation is central to her approach. Through the reordering of archival and ethnographic materials, Southgate-Smith creates works that move fluidly between intimate storytelling and historical reworking. She treats the archive not as a static repository, but as a temporal instrument—an active site that generates Afro-diasporic counter-memories and envisions futures rooted in ancestral knowledge. Her practice frequently engages with space-time compression, non-linear temporalities, and the role of cultural memory in shaping our imagination.

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. 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 publishing practice includes 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.

Current / Upcoming Exhibitions

Solo:

NAVIGATOR

March 6 – April 12, 2025

NiCOLETTi, London, UK

Group:

Hard Evidences

February 13 – March 30, 2025

198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London, UK

Special Projects

Colford, Soho House, APPLE Inc., Begg x Co, Hermès, Browns, Lexus, Sola Akingbola, Hospital Rooms x Sony, Clifford Chance, Park Hyatt, Tai Shani Studio, Oscar Murillo Studio, Ab Rogers Design, 2LG Studio, Zachary Pulman Studio, Don't Sleep