Born 1995, Lomé, TOGO
Lives and works in London
Authored
Grammar of the VOID
(2025)
Grammar of the VOID, 2025 accompanies Portraits of Recovery’s African Objects: Psychoactives, Spirituality & Mental Health, as part of Recoverist Month, September 2025.
The project emerged from Divine Southgate-Smith’s invitation to select and research a set of objects from the museum’s stores—predominantly from West Africa—currently not on display at the Manchester Museum. This research led to a series of workshops that used the museum archive as a tool to create a site for imagination, relation, and repair. Drawing on ancestral knowledge systems, the sessions explored the relationship between African spiritual practices and recovery, addressing how healing, ritual, and the use of psychoactives have been misinterpreted or erased through colonial frameworks. Through creative and speculative practices, individuals engaged with the psychological and spiritual impact of displacement and loss—both in relation to the artefacts and within their own lived experiences. The workshops offered alternative modes of recovery and wellbeing rooted in community, symbolism, and continuity, reframing the act of encounter as one of collective healing and re-inheritance.
Poetry contributions by Bara'ah, Chanje, Donna, Lorraine, and Nathaniel.
Text contributions by Divine Southgate-Smith and Dominic Pillai, Curator of Social Engagement at Portraits of Recovery.
Includes a Yoruba lament from Voices from Twentieth Century Africa
by Chinweizu Ibekwe.
Special thanks to Mark Prest, Director & CEO of Portraits of Recovery; Dominic Pillai, Curator of Social Engagement at Portraits of Recovery; and MYRIAD placements Lorraine Ballintine and Bara'ah Al Dalati for their invaluable contributions.
With gratitude to Manchester Museum, in particular Lucy Edematie, Provenance Researcher for the Living Cultures Collection, and Ciaron Wilkinson, Head of External Relations, for their support and for granting access to the Living Cultures Collection.
The project was generously funded by and forms part of MYRIAD Test & Learn, within the Greater Manchester Creative Health Place Partnership.
Photography, design, and editing by Divine Southgate-Smith.
Published by Studio DIVINE SOUTHGATE-SMITH
LIMITED EDITION: 250 Copies
Available upon request
Featured
𝒟𝓊𝑒𝓉𝓈
(2025)
𝒟𝓊𝑒𝓉𝓈 explores memory, instinct, lineage, and form. It began with a 2025 exhibition at Teaspoon Projects and became a book. Through texts, poems, and images by the artists and curators, alongside new commissions, it maps a series of exchanges, a constellation of voices attuned to intuition.
The book includes contributions by Maya Gurung–Russell Campbell, Dwayne Coleman, Mélanie Scheiner with Mariana Lemos and Alizée Gazeau, James Jordan Johnson with Kyle Hulwa-Ostrander, Divine Southgate-Smith, Filipa da Rocha Nunes, and Gigi Surel.
Edited by Mariana Lemos and Gigi Surel
Supported by Teaspoon Projects
Designed by Plan B Creative Studio
Printed and Bound by Folium
STOCKISTS:
Authored
"What I've Been Doing Lately"
(2024)
"What I've Been Doing Lately", 2024, was published to accompany Divine Southgate-Smith’s solo exhibition What I’ve Been Doing Lately held at CEU Open Gallery, Budapest.
The exhibition was curated by Kristián Gábor Török, with a commissioned text by Naima Hassan, researcher, curator, and co-founder of SITAAD—a platform and curatorial practice focused on the habitation of colonial sites, museums, and archives. The text emerges from an ongoing conversation between Hassan and Divine Southgate-Smith at the intersection of their practices as archivist and artist.
Divine Southgate-Smith: Collage as Archive, Sedimentation, and Afrodiasporic Counter-Memory
by Naima Hassan
Notes on, Divine Southgate-Smith: What I've Been Doing Lately
by Kristián Gábor Török
Organised by the British Council and CEU Open Gallery, with additional support from the British Embassy Budapest.
Text Commissioned by Divine Southgate-Smith
Cover Artwork and Image Research by Divine Southgate-Smith
Designed by Agnes Jekli, Moiré Kollektiv
Published by the British Council
LIMITED EDITION: 250 Copies
Available upon request
Featured
Sun as an Anchor
(2024)
Shot by JJ Lorenzo in collaboration with Jawara Alleyne, featuring a conversation with Divine Southgate-Smith and contributions from Johan Reddersen and Emmanuel Awuni.
In the Caribbean, the sun isn’t merely a celestial body; it’s a constant presence that shapes identities and walks in step with the lives of its inhabitants, no matter where they roam. Sun as an Anchor is a visual essay by photographer JJ Lorenzo, recording the creative process of Caribbean-London based artist Jawara Alleyne over a series of winters in England. Through its vivid imagery and insightful reflections, this book offers a unique perspective on the interplay between urban life, identity studies, and the natural world.
Published by Jawara Alleyne and JJ Lorenzo
Authored
Reappropriating the Gaze: Notes on Archive, Curation & Collage
(2023)
Reappropriating the Gaze: Notes on Archive, Curation & Collage, 2023
Published to accompany Divine Southgate-Smith’s solo exhibition TEETH KISSIN’ at Soup Gallery.
NOTES on Archive: When Provenance is Obsolete by Naima Hassan
NOTES on Curation: 'These memories are medicine' by Chloe Austin
NOTES on Collage: Me, A Mad Swirling Grabbing Thing by Ebun Sodipo
Texts Commissioned by Divine Southgate-Smith and SOUP
Cover Artwork and Image Research by Divine Southgate-Smith
Published and Produced by Foolscap Editions
LIMITED EDITION: 250 Copies
Available upon request at SOUP Gallery
Authored
TEETH KISSIN' Where Elephants Reside
(2022)
TEETH KISSIN’: Where Elephants Reside (2022) is an adaptation of original poetry written between 2019 and 2021. The book brings together photographs drawn from multiple archives alongside my own images, assembling a sequence of collages integrated with text. The publication is conceived as a site for conversation—where reading becomes an active encounter: a performance in which memory, emotion, and resistance come into view through dialogue and community.
There are many nuances to “kissing your teeth,” a non-verbal gesture that, since childhood, has enabled me to confidently object, agree, poke fun, and even show love. Widely used across Black and Brown communities, this intimate communication tool carries a range of meanings shaped by context and relationship. Whether political or personal, intimate or communal, the gesture holds a complexity that language often cannot capture. In this sense, it becomes a metaphor for the book’s approach to memory and communication.
Extract from the play KNOCK KNOCK by Olimpia Southgate-Smith
188 pages, 120gsm coated
Colorplan ebony cover
168x297mm
ISBN 978-1-73966967-1-3
Published by Lichen Books and All Purpose Studios
STOCKISTS:
Lichen Books, London, United Kingdom
Kindred, London, United Kingdom
Village. Leeds, United Kingdom