EMPIRE LINES

In this special episode, author and contemporary art historian Clare Carolin joins EMPIRE LINES live, to discuss the British government’s deployment of art as an instrument of war in the North of Ireland and the Falklands (Malvinas) in the 20th century, and their research in the archives and collections of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London.This episode was recorded live as part of A Conversation about Art, Media, and the State, with Laleh Khalili, Munira Cheema, Asif Akhtar, and Jamie Hakim at Bush House, King’s College London in June 2026. Find all the information online: kcl.ac.uk/events/a-conversation-about-art-media-and-the-stateThe Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968–1982 (2025) by Clare Carolin is published by Routledge.Dissenting Counter-Publics in Pakistani Social Media and Cafe Culture (2025) by Munira Cheema is published by Palgrave Macmillan.Both are available in all good bookshops and online.Read about Clare Carolin’s lecture-performance, How to Build a Decolonial Peace Museum (A Provocation in Three Parts), at On Radicalism, the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) Annual Conference 2025 in London: contemporaryartsociety.org/sites/default/files/attachments/On Radicalism (1 May 2025)%2C report by Jelena Sofronijevic.pdfFor more about the Venice Biennale 2026, and EVA International in 2016, read this article for the Contemporary Art Society: contemporaryartsociety.org/explore/resources/minor-keys-view-61st-venice-biennaleFor more about the Kipling family and the National College of Arts (NCA Lahore), hear contemporary artist Suleman Aqeel Khilji on the painting Elevation (Chiltan) (2025-2026), recorded at White Cube Paris: pod.link/1533637675/episode/YWYwMDNkMTgtNmJjOC00ZGZhLTlhYmItZWUzZjUyY2Y4ZjEyPRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelinesEMPIRE LINES is a project within the ecosystem of Radical Ecology (2025-2026).

In this special episode, author, curator, and archaeologist Dan Hicks joins EMPIRE LINES live, to trace the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, history, memory, and colonialism, through their book, Every Monument Will Fall (2025).This episode was recorded live at Curio at Common Ground in Oxford in October 2025. Find all the information in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/DN0R3hN2ExOEvery Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting by Dan Hicks is published by Penguin, and available in all good bookshops and online.Hear artist Pio Abad on Giolo’s Lament (2023) at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1e7df6b20f9c99aae3e4df96f50913cfRead about Ali Cherri’s 2025 exhibitions, How I Am Monument at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, and Vingt-quatre fantômes par seconde (Twenty-four Ghosts Per Second) at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, in the Burlington Contemporary: contemporary.burlington.org.uk/articles/articles/ali-cherriFor more about Octavia Butler, hear artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum on It Will End in Tears (2024), at the Barbican in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/6e9a8b8725e8864bc4950f259ea89310And read about the exhibition, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/pamela-phatsimo-sunstrum-barbicanPRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, contemporary artists and filmmakers Miloš Trakilović and Jelena Visković join EMPIRE LINES live, exloring narratives of war, displacement, and visual cultures in the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, through the video essay, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023).This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for soft enclosures, co-curated by Old Mountain Assembly, Rebecca Edwards, and Rina Meta at Forma in London, in October 2025. soft enclosures is an auxiliary programme to Dream States, Artists’ Film International (AFI) 2025.For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DMxKnjBtFf9/Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023) is currently on view as part of At the End of the Small Hours, curated by What, How and for Whom (WHW) and Ana Kovačić, at the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb until 30 November 2025.For more about Miloš Trakilović’s 564 Tracks (Not a Love Song Is Usually a Love Song) (2024) at the KW Institute in Berlin, read my article in The New Internationalist: newint.org/art/2025/spotlight-milos-trakilovicMotonation (2024) is currently on view as part of Jelena Visković: HEAT: A Sci-Fi Spa Story at Tallinn Art Hall until 23 November 2025.Listen to artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova on Melted into the Sun (2024), on view as part of Nebula, produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film, at the Venice Biennale in April 2024: pod.link/1533637675/episode/Y2IxOWI2YTUtMTI4MS00NzdiLWEyZmUtYmMyYTQ0NmQxMTQ2Saodat Ismailova: As We Fade is at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead until 7 June 2026.Read about Marina Abramović: Gates and Portals at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Modern Art Oxford, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/marina-abramovic-gates-and-portals-reviewFor more about Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), hear contemporary artists Hoa Dung Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, and gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang, recorded live as part of the public programme for Only Your Name at SLQS Gallery in London, in July 2025: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NjZmOGE0MmQtZTk5Ni00NTQ1LWJjYjAtMmVjODYzNWMwYjdjFor more from Artists’ Film International (AFI) 2025, read about Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán in this Letter from Timișoara, in Art Monthly: instagram.com/p/DFdBW0eoE55/⁠And view Anca and Arnold’s Rehearsals for Peace (2023) in Seeds of Hate and Hope, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic and Tafadzwa Makwabarara as part of Can We Stop Killing Each Other? at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, from 28 November 2025.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, filmmaker, cultural theorist, and curator Manthia Diawara joins EMPIRE LINES live, to discuss Édouard Glissant’s relations with natural environmental disasters, connecting the islands of the Caribbean and Scotland, through the exhibition, The Trembling Museum (2023-2024).This episode was recorded live as part of PEACE FREQUENCIES, a 24 hour live radio broadcast to mark International Human Rights Day in December 2023, and 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Listen back to the recordings with Billy Gerard Frank and Sara Shamma, and find all the information in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C0mAnSuodAZThe Trembling Museum, co-curated with Manthia Diawara and Terri Geis, was at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow from 2 December 2023 to 19 May 2024.Manthia Diawara’s film, A Letter from Yene (2022), is part of The Earth, the Fire, the Water and the Winds: For a Museum of Errantry with Édouard Glissant at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo until 25 January 2026. You can join the conference on 25 and 26 November 2025.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, contemporary artists Hoa Dung Clerget and Duong Thuy Nguyen, and gallerist Sarah Le Quang Sang, join EMPIRE LINES live, exploring the legacies of French and British colonialism in East Asia, fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, through the series, If They Survive, They are Refugees (2024).Marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, Only Your Name (2025) is a group exhibition featuring works by artists of Vietnamese descent: Hoa Dung Clerget, Vicky Đỗ, and Duong Thuy Nguyen. The exhibition follows the journey of Vietnamese people migrating to the UK from 1975 onwards, preserving history through a Vietnamese lens and reflecting on the contemporary diaspora.In this special episode, recorded live at SLQS Gallery in London, gallerist Sarah Le Quang Song discusses the particular location of the exhibition, close to Hackney’s Kingsland Road, also known as the ‘Pho Mile’, where many Vietnamese families settled from the late 1970s. We discuss the title, which draws from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), a novel by Ocean Vuong, and the work of thinkers like Homi Bhabha and Saidiya Hartman.Duong Thuy Nguyen describes the process of making their embossed aluminium and wax sculptures, which reinterpret Joan Wakelin’s photographs of Vietnamese refugees held in Hong Kong detention centres and refugee camps, now held in the collections of the V&A in London. Hoa Dung Clerget presents installations and sculptural works that consider the labour and lives of immigrant women through Nail Art subculture, distorting stereotypical and fetishised portrayals of Asian women. Drawing on their work, Chinoiserie (2025), Hoa shares examples of orientalism in East Asian art and education systems. We explore both artists’ work with the Museum of the Home in East London, plus Vicky Đỗ’s documentary films, revisiting the history of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong.This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Only Your Name, an exhibition at SLQS Gallery in London, in July 2025.For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DLhGFqCIhNA/Womb of Fire 2025, curated by Tuong Linh, opens in Hanoi in October 2025, and tours to Ho Chi Minh City until January 2026.Interspecies Entanglements, curated by Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, is at the SLQS Screening Room online until February 2026. Damaris Athene is at SLQS Gallery in London from 10 October 2025.For more contemporary artists working from diasporas, find out more about SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025)⁠⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland: linktr.ee/seedlingstg2025Hear Iman Datoo and Jessica J. Lee on Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging (2024), recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b457bcd064badcdc4dc2a2a8fde86768⁠For more about orientalism and French colonialism in North Africa, listen to contemporary artist ⁠Zineb Sedira⁠ on Dreams Have No Titles (2022-Now), recorded with Whitechapel Gallery and Goodman Gallery in London, as part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/N2NjZjUzYTctY2JlMS00N2JhLThjNTAtNGE3YWUwMjEwYzNlFor more about mother of pearl paintings, hear Sonia Ocaña Ruiz’s EMPIRE LINES episode about a ⁠Mexican Enconchado of the Virgin of Guadalupe (c. 1700s)⁠: ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/NGEyNWUwOTItNTMzOC00NDgyLWJiZjAtZmFjOWFjNTkzYmQ0PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, contemporary artist Elsa James joins EMPIRE LINES live, navigating how the slave ship marks and haunts Black lives in Britain today, in their interdisciplinary exhibition, It Should Not Be Forgotten (2025).*Content Warning* This episode discusses rape and other forms of sexual violence.Seeking to capture ‘the rupture, erasure, fragmentation and interconnectedness of Black Life in the diaspora’, Elsa James’ latest exhibition brings together performance works, neon sculptures, and collage. Elsa confronts Britain’s ‘national amnesia’ regarding its role in the transatlantic slave trade, bringing alternative perspectives on how we engage with the past. The artist crafts fictional narratives to contend with colonial archival records, and delves into the psychological effects of enslavement, both exposing historical atrocities and honouring the resistance of two enslaved women.In this special episode, recorded live in Elsa’s Afro Dada studio at Firstsite in Colchester, we journey through the larger-than-life photographic installation located on the main floor of the gallery, which draws inspiration from American academic Christina Sharpe, and her idea that ‘the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora’. Elsa shares influences including Tina M. Campt, Steve Martin, and David Olusoga, and details her collaborations, including with sound artist Trevor Mathison, who worked with a field recording from a sacred ceremony Elsa attended during an artist residency at Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Artists Space in Nigeria. Exploring ideas around Afropessimism, we talk about the role of critical hope in Elsa’s practice, touching on the work of Alberta Whittle and Maya Angelou.We discuss Elsa’s long relationship with Essex, as the first artist to exhibit in Firstsite’s Living Room space as part of her Black Girl Essex residency, and solo exhibition, Othered in a region that has been historically Othered, at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea in 2022. We explore recent group exhibitions including the Hayward Gallery Touring Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, and transfeminisms at Mimosa House in London, developing her research into Mary Prince. Plus, Elsa describes the interconnectedness of her research interests, and Black British, Caribbean, and African heritages.This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Elsa James: It Should Not Be Forgotten, an exhibition at Firstsite Colchester, in July 2025.For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DK-WsOPzeI3/Hear the first episode with Elsa James, Living in the Wake of the Lust for Sugar (2023), recorded at the Museum of London Docklands: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NTFiZDQxMjUtZDI2Ni00ODE1LTk1YjktOTM4NzNhY2YzOTBiFor more about the Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, listen to artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA on Decolonised Structures: Queen Victoria (2022) at the Serpentine in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NTE4MDVlYzItM2Q3NC00YzQ1LTgyNGItYTBlYjQ0Yjk3YmNjAnd about fellow resident Leo Robinson, listen to this cutting with Dominic Paterson from The Trembling Museum at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, part of ⁠⁠SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025)⁠⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ZDA5OTgyY2EtMGE3MC00MGExLTkwOTUtODc3ODFkNTAyZmQ3About Harold Offeh, listen to We Came Here (2022) at Van Gogh House in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ZmI5MmM2NWYtYzAyNy00MDkwLTk5MjMtNDhlZjcxZDExMTU3Hear Ekow Eshun, curator of the touring exhibition, The Time is Always Now (2024) at the National Portrait Gallery in London and The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/df1d7edea120fdbbb20823a2acdb35cfPRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

In this special episode, filmmaker and contemporary artist Alia Syed joins EMPIRE LINES live, to weave together their works in moving image, photography, and oral history, and reflect on personal experiences of migration in South Asian diasporic communities in 1960s–1970s Glasgow, through their ongoing film series, The Dhaba (2025).Drawing inspiration from the tale of St. Mungo - the patron saint and founder of Glasgow - Alia Syed’s exhibition, The Ring in the Fish, is an intimate exploration of memory, cultural transmission, and identity in Scotland. In The Dhaba (2025), Alia gleans stories from a series of interviews she initiated with members of the South Asian community, exposing absences in official narratives and archives, and illuminating histories in the spaces between national identities, race, gender, and diaspora. With this new, experimental, 16mm film work, Alia explores the role of imagination in migration, and how images carried across multiple generations of migrants from India and Pakistan can create new landscapes and enable new ways of being.Alia details her relationships with ‘the second city of Empire’, Swansea in Wales, and London, including her long-term creative relationship with Gilane Tawadros, her formative work, Fatima’s Letter (1992), filmed at Whitechapel Underground Station, and shortlisting for the Film London Jarman Award (2018). From her current work with curator Shalmali Shetty, we discuss her many intergenerational collaborations, and relations to artist women including Jasleen Kaur, who shares Alia’s experiences of ‘monocultures’ in Glasgow. Alia shares the importance of audio, literature, language, and translation, in her work with film and moving image.Plus, we consider political solidarity through her life and practice, from her father’s activism and connections to Yasser Arafat, to the present. Alia reflects on CCA Glasgow as an institution – one that she recalls having occupied as a teenager, when it was known as the Third Eye Centre - including the Board’s ambiguous statements around endorsing PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and response to Art Workers for Palestine Scotland’s programme to Reclaim the CCA in June 2025.This episode was recorded live as part of the public programme for Alia Syed: The Ring in the Fish, an exhibition at CCA Glasgow, in June 2025. The exhibition was originally scheduled to continue until 26 July 2025. Join the artist in a panel discussion at Many Studios in Glasgow on Saturday 26 July.For more information, visit: instagram.com/p/DKuql9-It_3/?img_index=1Wallpaper (2008) is on view as part of Tigers & Dragons: India and Wales in Britain at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea until 2 November 2025.Read about Alia’s work at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, and relations to Jasleen Kaur and Permindar Kaur, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/permindar-kaur-john-hansard-galleryListen to Ingrid Pollard’s EMPIRE LINES episodes, from Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4, and with Corinne Fowler, as part of Invasion Ecology (2024) at Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor: pod.link/1533637675/episode/9f4f72cb1624f1c5ee830c397993732eNil Yalter on Exile is a Hard Job (1974-Now) at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London, part of London Gallery Weekend (LGW) 2023, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/36b8c7d8d613b78262e54e38ac62e70fAnd Dr. Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, sounding out 1960s migration between post-colonial Kerala and the Arab Gulf in a cassette of S. A. Jameel's Dubai Kathu Pattu (Dubai Letter Song) (1977): pod.link/1533637675/episode/417429b5c504842ddbd3c82b07f7b0f8PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Find out more about Iman Datoo’s installation, Kinnomic Botany (2022), now part of ⁠SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries⁠, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Travelling Gallery in Scotland.The group exhibition, featuring Emii Alrai, Iman Datoo, Radovan Kraguly, Zeljko Kujundzic, Remi Jabłecki, Leo Robinson, and Amba Sayal-Bennett, is touring across Scotland, culminating at Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) in August 2025.For more information, follow Travelling Gallery and EMPIRE LINES on social media, and visit: linktr.ee/SEEDLINGSTG2025🌱🌱🌱This cutting comes from the EMPIRE LINES episode, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, Jessica J. Lee (2024), recorded live as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, ran from 1 June to 10 August 2024.The wider programme featured anti-colonial talks and workshops with exhibiting artists, writers, researchers, and gardeners, reimagining more empathic connections between humans, plants, animals, and landscapes. For more information, follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Radical Ecology⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Southcombe Barn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on social media, and visit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠radicalecology.earth/events/invasion-ecology-exhibition⁠⁠⁠⁠.Listen to the full episode, on the EMPIRE LINES podcast: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b457bcd064badcdc4dc2a2a8fde86768 Watch the full video conversation online, via Radical Ecology: vimeo.com/995973173And find all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/DCFmxMHorvI/PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: ⁠⁠instagram.com/empirelinespodcast⁠⁠Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/empirelines