Shenece Oretha

Using Poaceae (the grass family) as a botanical starting point, Shenece will experiment by envisaging new sculptural forms that will transform the exhibition space into an instrument in its own right. As these new hybrid forms activate the gallery sonically, the work will begin to draw out the otherwise untraceable knowledge that the grasses carry with them. 

Over the last few years, Shenece has been developing an embodied creative practice that intertwines sound, sculpture-making and cultivation as a way to re-forge our relationship to the land – a practice they call “the Black Whole”. 

This process began in 2021 as Shenece developed a series of outdoor happenings at LUX, London, called Listening as a Whole, testing out collective ways to shape an embodied

listening practice. The programme also drew upon the music(ality) inherent in Black women’s literature and thought, referencing the works of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Dionne Brand and many others. 

During the same period, Shenece began a year-long residency on an allotment in North London, which provided the conceptual grounding for their 2022 solo exhibition Ah So It Go, Ah No So It Go, Go So! at Cubitt Gallery. The show explored the poetry and complexity of the language of horticulture and cultivation in relation to Black diaspora, migration and culture.

Currently, Shenece is on a year-long Production Residency at Glasgow Print Studio, where they have been experimenting with the haptic qualities of rice grains. The resulting exhibition, Some Rhythms Persist (a duo show with artist Camara Taylor), displays innovative techniques such as molasses-based steel etching and rice printing, furthering Shenece’s development of a material language that brings together explorations of Black histories, sound, land and industry.

The upcoming collaboration with Grand Union will support Shenece in shifting this research further into the sculptural realm, testing how sound and deep listening practices can foster reciprocal frameworks for knowledge production. Shenece will begin their research process at GU’s canalside Common Field, a location shaped by and entangled in the legacies of Empire and industry. Supported by an intergenerational network of gardeners that Shenece will develop over time, the overall project seeks to meld ancestral, embodied and collective ways of understanding the land in order to repair our relationship with it.