This autumn, Zimbabwean-Scottish artist and curator Sekai Machache took over Mount Stuart on the Isle Of Bute. It had been over two years since Machache meticulously pitched every detail of her desired exhibition at the historic home, which curates a lively and innovative visual arts programme. Emerging from an intensely productive period of creativity during lockdown, the artist devised Svikiro. An utterly immersive expanded cinema experience, Svikiro featured seven films specifically designed for seven imposing rooms in Mount Stuart. In some shape or form, Svikiro will live on at the Venice Biennale in 2024, where Machache will be representing Zimbabwe.

With fervour, Machache explains that the word ‘svikiro’ derives from the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It translates as, she explains, ‘spirits, but also relates to spiritual conduits in which they help people from their community with healing modalities, roots, herbs and dream interpretations.’ The theme of healing modalities turns up again in Machache’s The Divine Sky, a long-term project of hers. 

A thorough excavation of the colour indigo and ‘its connection to the transatlantic slave trade’, The Divine Sky has been supported by a 2021–23 residency at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh. For Machache, working with indigo offers a ‘healing modality’ and this cathartic release of colour sings across each of the project’s 12 stages; these multidisciplinary components (comprised of poesis, storytelling and photography) reflect the stages of the indigo dyeing process. 

Although Machache frequently centres her own image in The Divine Sky, she is quick to clarify that ‘it is not about [her] or [her] identity as much as it might seem’. Instead, she offers a psychoanalytic interrogation of the notion of the self by playing different characters. Citing her Blackness and queerness, she works through the self’s construction as defined by dominant forces of white supremacy. 

Breathtaking photographic stills which capture a figure majestically navigating the endless blanket bog of the Flow Country in Caithness were recently acquired by The Fleming Collection. In particular, ‘Light Divine Sky 2’ currently features in the Scottish Women Artists exhibition at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, and at Crafted Selves by Fife Contemporary (currently showing in St Andrews, then Kirkcaldy in 2024). The mesmerising imagery of Machache is quickly becoming embedded in Scotland’s visual consciousness. 

Discover who else made the cut in the The List Hot 100 on our site or in our latest issue, available at all good stockists across Glasgow and Edinburgh.