Protea / Extraction The Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement (CREATURE)

Protea / Extraction is an installation created by Mae Shummo, Lucia Medina Uriarte and Ektoras Arkomanis. Funded by the Arts Council England, it was commissioned by the Anti-Apartheid Centre of Memory and Learning and the Liliesleaf Trust UK to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the African National Conference at Penton St. London, and to honour the legacy of the Anti-Apartheid movement.

The artwork and research bring together knowledge on seeds economies with histories of colonisation and resilience in South Africa. It reimagines a fragment of an early twentieth-century colonial interior somewhere in Europe or South Africa.

View here at the Anti-Apartheid Centre of Memory and Learning for the research rationale and further info on the project.

Mae Shummo is a British-Sudanese multidisciplinary artist and curator working with installation, sculpture, and digital media. Over the past decade, she has worked in a broad creative spectrum with emphasis on bridging the gap between creativity in fine art and other fields, such as fashion, brand identity and event curation. Mae’s research and practice look at global indigenous curatorial practices. Mae is an alumna of London Metropolitan University.

Lucia Medina Uriarte is an architect and a founding member of NOW WHAT, an inter-sectional collective at the London Metropolitan University, which promotes open discussions about re-learning design, history and aesthetics from a viewpoint that acknowledges multiple voices, backgrounds, and forms of practice.

Ektoras Arkomanis is an artist working with film and a writer. His research focuses on areas which remain on the margins of cities and histories. He has edited a book on cities and films, titled Migrations in New Cinema. Ektoras teaches the history of architecture at the London Metropolitan University, and he is a member of the CREATURE research centre.