Brent Biennial 2025: FIRE Ritual - O: LADLE ME

About the event:

The ladle, often a quiet presence in the domestic sphere, is a vessel of nourishment and care—a simple tool that bridges hands, hearts, and histories. Inspired by the Shehuo 社火 (Community Fire) traditions of Northwest China, this ceremony transforms the ladle into a mask of meaning, a talisman imbued with protection, memory, and connection.

Presented by Sue Man and Capri Jiang, artists rooted in hospitality and food heritage, this event explores food as both medium and language in artistic expression. Through their practice, fire, food, and storytelling merge—transforming the simple act of feeding into a shared ritual of remembrance, care, and healing.  

Through it, we gather to honour what sustains us and to share the warmth of being together, creating a moment where everyday objects and gestures become symbols of community and healing. This event becomes an alchemical exchange, where the act of sharing food evolves into a ritual of protection and transformation. Talismans emerge through storytelling, nourishment, and the shared experience of connection. 

About the artists:

Sue Man (b. Stockholm, Sweden) is a London-based artist of Chinese heritage. Through a participatory, multidisciplinary approach, she investigates cultural heritage, memory, and the intricate weave of belonging and identity. Working across mixed media—including ephemera, textiles, clay, sculpture, and food—she creates spaces where stories are shared, resilience is nurtured, and futures are imagined.

As an artist, cultural programmer, and community builder, Sue mobilises intergenerational narratives through materiality and conversation, repurposing her family trade in hospitality to connect communities and amplify voices and stories often overlooked. Since 2009, she has led creative projects with institutions such as the Southbank Centre and Museum of the Home, alongside grassroots organisations.

Alongside her collaborative work, Sue continues her studio practice, exploring domestic rituals, memory, and food as a site of cultural expression and community activism, creating work that reflects both personal and collective histories in immersive, engaging experiences.

Capri Jiang is a participatory artist, community event coordinator, and researcher who leverages art and design as transformative tools to communicate, support communities, and challenge prevailing narratives. Her practice focuses on creative interventions in social justice issues, particularly the right to food and gentrification, expressed through multidisciplinary mediums such as zine creation, short films, art workshops and curatorial projects.

In collaboration with Granville Community Kitchen, Capri developed a series of participatory research projects to respond to local food insecurity and celebrate diverse food heritage in South Kilburn while nurturing collective action around the right to food. For Capri, food serves as a universal and inclusive medium, deeply tied to culture, land, human rights, and self-expression, that grounds and shapes her socially engaged artistic practice.

Brent Biennial: FIRE Ritual

FIRE Ritual takes place from 26 September to 12 October 2025, centring on metamorphosis, loss, rage and regeneration. FIRE ignites and mutates, and this chapter of the Biennial explores how creation and destruction can forge new paths through collective acts of remembrance and transformation.

Fire is a tool, both revered and feared. A glowing hearth calls us home, to safety and sustenance. Gentle embers create warmth, while a blazing flame provides illumination and force for change. Its power is exponential and the loss of its control threatens destruction. Fire symbolises the potential for creation and destruction. It challenges the notion that structures should last forever, and instead speaks to transferences of im/materiality across dimensions. 

FIRE Ritual forms part of the programme for Brent Biennial 2025. Titled Bones, stones, and calling the four elements, the Biennial is curated by Annie Jael Kwan, and unfolds across a series of four elemental rituals – WATER, EARTH, FIRE and AIR – at four Brent sites - a public reservoir, a park, an old medical facility and a university campus. Located in the north and south of the borough— Harrow, Wembley and Kilburn— the ‘rituals’ will feature 28 artists presenting workshops, talks, performance and exhibition. 

FIRE Ritual is presented by the Brent Biennial 2025 in partnership with Metroland Cultures, with the support of Arts Council England, Brent Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Granville Community Kitchen and Something Human 

For more information visit : https://metrolandcultures.com/events/brent-biennial-2025/