Anna Maria Nabirye self portrait
Tickets available
Book NowThu 8 May, 6.30 - 8pm
Creative Studio
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Access requirements
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
This event takes place in Creative Studio at Whitechapel Gallery, located on the ground floor.
This event lasts approximately 1.5 hours. There is a scheduled break halfway through, but attendees are welcome to take as many breaks as needed during the event
The audio piece we will listen to during the event is approx. 36 minutes long and will be captioned
This event is suitable for those over the age of 16 If you have particular access requirements please let us know in advance of the event (preferably 2 weeks prior) and we will endeavour to make suitable provision. Please email publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org
Transport
To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
Live Recording
Please note: we audio record all events for the Whitechapel Gallery Archive and possible future online publication via Soundcloud. This recording will also form part of Nabirye’s on-going research and elements may be incorporated into a future larger artwork.
Join artist Anna Maria Nabirye for a relaxed, cosy and intimate evening of listening and conversation, as we celebrate the magic of diasporic kitchen spaces, as sites for collective culture making, community, and connection to our ancestral homelands.
As part of the public programme accompanying Nabirye’s broader project The Funnest Room in the House, this event will be a joyful exploration of kitchen spaces and the many stories and memories that they hold, particularly for people in the diaspora.
After rooting the project’s genesis in the kitchen of Nabirye’s childhood, we will collectively listen to The Funnest Room in the House – Afterword: an audio work created as part of the Whitstable Biennale 2022.
A range of previous contributors including Nabirye’s family and friends, along with archival specialists will then join her in conversation. Together we will playfully examine the collective and layered memories held within the Black British and diasporic kitchen space, and its function as a bridge between home in the UK and ‘home-home’ in our ancestral homelands.
Shining a light on its shape-shifting capabilities, we will reflect and celebrate the significance of the kitchen as a portal to the multitude of places we call ‘home’ throughout our lives; as rooms to cook, to eat, to gather, to hide, to bathe, to learn to dance in.
This event is co-produced by Nicky Childs and was developed in collaboration with Artsadmin as part of the accompanying public programme alongside Anna Maria Nabirye’s wider project, The Funnest Room in the House.
Anna Maria Nabirye is a multi-disciplinary artist and performer initiating projects and collaborating across visual arts, photography, performance, fiction, documentary, theatre, screen, social practice and fashion. She has just completed a scholarship residency with the Peter Marlow Foundation focusing on her photography practice.
Recent work include multimedia visual arts work Up In Arms – which centres around conversations on the complexities of interracial friendship, co-created with Annie Saunders, this social practice work formed, an exhibition, 3 channel film and performance, commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion and produced by Artsadmin (2023) Anna Maria is currently co-writing the publication of this project. Nabirye has an long standing collaboration with Noor Afshan Mirza and Brad Butler Ruptures (London Film Fest/Home/Delfina Foundation), Everything For Everyone And Nothing For Us (Mirror City-Hayward), Hold Your Ground (FVU) & Deep State (FVU).
Her own projects include Motherhoody & One Prick At A Time with Jess Mabel Jones (The Albany/King’s College). Acting credits include the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, The Almeida, The Gate, Film4, BBC1 and BBC2. Nabirye co-founded and co-runs Afri-Co-Lab, a creative community dreaming space in East Sussex, they worked with many organisations including Home Live Art, Charleston House, De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and V&A. Acting credits include the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, The Almeida, Film4, BBC1 and BBC2. As an educator and director Nabirye has worked with Yale School of Drama, National Theatre Institute, Mountview Academy, LAMDA and London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Junior Artists.
The Funnest Room in the House is a portal back to ancestral homelands of the Black diaspora, celebrating the kitchen space as an archive that charts the many journeys of the diaspora to the UK.
The Funnest Room in the House takes inspiration from the kitchens of Nabirye’s childhood and those of the diaspora. Intimate spaces that were individual to each family’s life but were also a performance of collective culture, containing expressions of ancestral homelands and nostalgia for back-home mashed up with British culture.
