As Hardly Found: A conversation with Ato Jackson, Mariana Castillo Deball, Debbie Meniru, Ella Mahalia Adu

To celebrate the opening of the As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture exhibition, commissioned artists Ato Jackson and Mariana Castillo Deball will be in conversation with Debbie Meniru (assistant curator of ‘In the Black Fantastic’ at the Hayward Gallery) and Ella Mahalia Adu (assistant curator of As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture) who will chair the talk.

The evening will be introduced by the As Hardly Found exhibition curator Albert Brenchat-Aguilar, and will be followed by a drinks reception to launch the exhibition at the Architectural Association.

MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL (Mexico, 1975) is a visual artist whose work has explored the history of cultural objects, their prevalence and the different ways in which these have been interpreted and understood throughout time. Her work’s multidisciplinary focus has driven her to collaborate with professionals of different branches of knowledge on science and culture. She has been awarded with internationally renowned prizes, including the Prize of the National Gallery, Berlin (2013), the Zurich Art Prize (2012) and the Ars Viva Award (2009). She has participated in numerous major exhibitions and biennials, including the Venice Biennale (2022, 2011), the Bienal de São Paulo (2016), Berlin Biennale (2014), dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012). The artist’s most recent solo exhibitions include MUAC University Museum, Mexico city (2021), Museum fürGegenwartskunst Siegen (2021), Modern Art Oxford, England (2020), Monash University Museum, Melbourne Australia, and New Museum, New York City (both 2019). Furthermore, at the San Francisco Art Institute (2016), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2014), the cca, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland and the Chisenhale Gallery, London (2013). She has been teaching as a professor of sculpture at Münster Academy of Art since 2015.

ATO JACKSON (b. 1994) is a Ghanaian born artist, who lives and works in Kumasi-Ghana. Jackson’s practice as an artist began from an interest in image making as a medium to connect to his community and the world at large. He understands images as an extension of our thought and life itself. Images can speak to us, transform us, mold us, distort us, displace us, and control our social, economic and political lives. Through the medium of painting, drawing, and silkscreen printing, Jackson creates Images that explore notions of Occupation, translation, and its residues of lost, erasure, and abstraction of Identity of humans and spaces. Jackson earned his BFA in Painting in 2018 and is currently finishing his MFA in Painting at the College of Art and Built Environment, KNUST, Kumasi-Ghana. He is part of the blaxTARLINES community in Kumasi-Ghana. He has participated in exhibitions in SCCA Tamale as a volunteered member of the construction team in 2019 and 2020. He participated in “Existing Otherwise: The Future of Coexistence” at SCCA Tamale as a showing artist, 2022. He also participated in “Existing Otherwise – Once Way Another” 2022, at Galerie Wedding, Berlin-Germany.

DEBBIE MENIRU is a London-based writer and curator. She is currently Curatorial Assistant at the Hayward Gallery, most recently working on the acclaimed exhibition In the Black Fantastic. Previously, she has worked on exhibitions at organisations including Tate Modern, the Migration Museum and Somerset House. As a writer, she explores art and museums through a personal lens. Her article ‘Fried yam in the museum’ is a set text on the MA Curating the Art Museum programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art and she is a contributing author to books about ceramics published by Rizzoli and Hatje Cantz. She is also one of this year’s commissioned writers for New Contemporaries.

ELLA MAHALIA ADU is a London based an architect and writer. Her research considers changing modes of grassroots cultural production in Britain; through the lens of public revelry and Bass Culture. In addition to her interests as a designer, Ella is a soundsystem operator and member of PATCH Collective; with whom she enjoys curating parties, salons and functions.