Maud Sulter: You Are My Kindred Spirit

Recorded at Tramway, Glasgow

With Tomiwa Folorunso, Natasha Ruwona, and Pelumi Odubanjo.

This episode celebrates the work, and living legacy, of Scottish-Ghanian artist, photographer, film-maker and writer Maud Sulter, thanks to a brilliant – and free – exhibition that’s running at the Tramway in Glasgow until the end of March…

Titled Maud Sulter: You Are My Kindred Spirit, it’s an immersive experience of moving image and spoken word archives, alongside photographs, montage and written works like her Alba Sonnets – and her voice rings out across the building…

Maud was born in the Gorbals – not far from the Tramway – in 1960, and died after a long illness in 2008. She began her career as a writer, and award-winning poet, before expanding her practice to include photography and visual art, often addressing the erasure and representation of Black Women in the histories of these disciplines – and giving a voice to the marginalised.

Along with the brilliant exhibition itself, there’s a live events programme, curated by Pelumi Odubanjo, which includes poetry evenings, collective readings, presentations, conversations and a rare screening of Maud’s play Service to Empire in the coming weeks.

The live programme launched with a screening of Natasha Ruwona and Tomiwa Folorunso’s short film, Maud, which invited Black women making art in Scotland to reflect on her life, and work, and influence. 

Many of them also feature in the superb PASSIONS publication, which revisits and responds to Maud’s seminal 1990 book Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity.

I caught up with Natasha, and Tomiwa, and Pelumi, after the screening, to chat a bit more about Maud, and her work… listen on all podcast platforms – or below! And thank you, if you do…