Libita Sibungu was born into a British-Namibian family in England in 1987, graduating from Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London in 2009, with a BA in Print and Digital Media. Using mediums such as writing, storytelling, performance, photography, print, and sound, Sibungu's work explores mining and geology as a means to uncover how the legacy of colonialism and diasporic migration continue to impact the present.
Interdisciplinary artist Libita Sibungu was born into a British-Namibian family in England in 1987. Her father was a member of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and fought for Namibian independence from Apartheid South Africa before being forced into exile in Cornwall during the 1980s. Here, he studied mining engineering and subsequently worked in the tin mines. Sibungu spent her formative years in Cornwall, an experience that significantly shaped her continuous exploration of space and place, as manifested in migration movements across rural landscapes. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts (UAL) in 2009, with a BA in Print and Digital Media. Using mediums such as performance, photography, print, sound, writing, and storytelling, Sibungu crafts environments that intertwine decolonial narratives within immersive installations and poetically arranged exhibits. Her artistic practice delves into the politics of the body and the landscape, analysing their connections to migration, blackness, and colonialism. Sibungu's creations aim to discover and bring to light obscured, forgotten, and concealed narratives, striving to recast containers of memory and ‘states of liberation emerging out of fugitive experiences’ (Watershed). In her powerful and disruptive performances Sibungu regularly employs electronic equipment such as guitar pedals, microphones, and vocal effects. This allows her to build and portray a multitude of polyphonic identities and memories.
Sibungu's exploration of her family history led to her ongoing body of work, Quantum Ghost (2018). Conceived during her residency at Gasworks, London, it featured a multi-channel audio installation, a series of large-scale photograms, and a schedule of live performances. Described by the artist as 'a poetic lament to memory' (Gasworks), the project mapped the journey of her late father via personal documents, the National Archives of Namibia, and the records of Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall. Sibungu's artistic perspective operated simultaneously on two levels; she embodied the role of an archival researcher, meticulously scrutinising the colonial imprints left on Namibia's arid, dusty surface, while also being a devoted daughter, her father's diasporic existence being profoundly woven into her own self-identity. Drawing connections between the mining regions of Namibia and Cornwall, the exhibition uncovered how the legacy of colonialism and diasporic migration continue to resonate through the deep-time strata of geology. As noted by Derica Shields in Frieze, by delving into spaces with no memory, no witnesses, and little archival memory, Sibungu was able to register ‘how profoundly this temporal space is shaped by the violences of colonialism, extraction, chattel slavery, displacement – and invites us to be alert to it’ (Shields 2019). Quantum Ghost toured as a solo exhibition at both Gasworks and Spike Island, Bristol, England (2019). In Quantum Ghost (8), (9), (10) (2019, Arts Council Collection), the artist scrutinised the raw materials – from mined ore and sedimentary rocks to precious metals and rare earth elements – that are central to capitalist extraction. The work featured images that seemed to hint at visions of alternate realities. These images, called photograms, were created by pressing mined minerals and personal items directly onto light-sensitive paper, evoking associations of cosmic landscapes, galaxies and dark matter. Recently, the work was featured in Unearthing: Memory, Land, Materiality, an exhibition curated by MA Curating the Art Museum students at the Courtauld Gallery in London (2023).
In 2017 Sibungu's work featured in the Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, while her lithograph Revealing the Crisis of Testimony that Arises when the Past is Not Contained (2018, Government Art Collection) was created during Sibungu's 2018 residency in Johannesburg and later displayed in the group exhibition Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House, London (2019). Exploring the nature of the imaginative space, it emerged from Sibungu’s annotations on Jean Fischer’s ‘contextualisation of post-colonial trauma survived into a poetics of remembrance’ (Government Art Collection), echoed in Kobena Mercer's Exiles, Diasporas and Strangers (2008), the first cross-cultural survey of the experiences of migration and displacement that shaped twentieth-century art. Sibungu is currently engaged in producing new work that responds to the archive housed at the British Geological Survey in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire. This archive mirrors the organization's colonial past, chronicling its extensive overseas operations that meticulously mapped and documented mineral resources of potential value across the world. Sibungu's project aligns with her continuing investigation into mining, its interconnections with an expansive colonial history, and its relevance to her personal family history spanning Cornwall and Namibia. Responding to her surroundings in Penzance, Sibungu's research focusses on granite, exploring its magmatic creation and its ties to ritualistic practices in contrast to the rigorous scientific categorisation imposed by the archive. In 2020, Sibungu received the Henry Moore Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Award and she was the 2022 Arts Foundation Future Award winner and Rolex Protege nominated artist. She currently lives and works between Bristol, England and Windhoek, Namibia. In the UK public domain her work is represented in the Courtauld Collection, London; Arts Council Collection, and the Government Art Collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Libita Sibungu]
Publications related to [Libita Sibungu] in the Ben Uri Library