NAVIGATOR, NiCOLETTi, London, 2025

NıCOLETTı presents Navigator, a solo exhibition by Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith. Exploring archives as temporal instruments, the exhibition examines how history and memory move across time, refracting through the present to imagine possible futures. Through magnified archival imagery, printmaking and digital processes, Southgate-Smith transforms recognisable subjects into abstraction, proposing opacity as a form of resistance. Navigator reflects on authorship, representation and collective memory, offering a poetic meditation on movement, care and the transformative potential of hope.

Aspects of Things Existing, FRIEZE, London, 2024

NıCOLETTı presents Aspects of Things Existing, a solo exhibition by Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith. Developed during a research fellowship at East Gallery, Norwich University of the Arts, in collaboration with the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the installation explores African traditions of craft and design, particularly the use of glass in Voodoo practices. Through sculpture and assemblage, Southgate-Smith reflects on spirituality, temporality and the archive as a living entity shaped by imagination and folklore.

SPIT w/ Emmanuel Awuni, Public Gallery, London, 2024

Public Gallery presents SPIT, a duo exhibition by London-based artists Emmanuel Awuni and Divine Southgate-Smith. Conceived through a year-long collaboration, the exhibition combines painting, sculpture, sound and film to explore abstraction, rhythm and diasporic expression. Engaging with African spiritual and artistic traditions, Awuni and Southgate-Smith reimagine the archive as a living force of liberation and transformation. SPIT celebrates rhythm as energy, memory and resistance—a collective, joyful expression of Black creativity and ancestral connection.

"Am I Porous or Am I Imploding", East Gallery, Norwich, 2024

East Gallery presents Am I porous or am I imploding?, a solo exhibition by Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith . Developed during a research-based fellowship, the exhibition launches a speculative investigation into the archive of African expression through craft. Centring on the bead as a universal and ancestral form, Southgate-Smith reflects on porous histories shaped by colonial collecting. The resulting works propose a pluralistic narrative interweaving the archive with contemporary lived experience.

"What I've Been Doing Lately", CEU Open Gallery, British Council, Budapest, 2024

Divine Southgate-Smith, a London-based Togolese-British artist, presents What I’ve Been Doing Lately, a solo exhibition exploring the poetic potency of archival imagery. Through collage, photography and mixed media, Southgate-Smith reconfigures archival narratives, blurring boundaries between memory and imagination. Combining found images, text and digital interventions, the works challenge traditional representations of the Black body while proposing opacity as protection and power. Inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s 1981 story, the exhibition reflects on how archives shape history and identity.

TEETH KISSIN', SOUP Gallery, London, 2023

Soup presents TEETH KISSIN’, the debut solo exhibition by Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith. Bringing together photographic collage, sculpture and archival material, the exhibition explores Black cultural expression, memory and collective healing. Featuring works from Southgate-Smith’s ongoing series What I’ve Been Doing Lately and MELA-9, alongside new constructions and a collaborative playlist with Daniel Kabuya, the show reflects on gestures, artefacts and images as sites of intimacy, empowerment and imagination.