a solo exhibition from Ayesha Sureya
Private View: Thursday 7th August 2025 17:00 - 19:00
Opening Hours: Friday 8th August 14:00 - 17:00
Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th August 2025 12:00 - 16:00
Location: Nunhead Cemetery Chapel
BOOKING IS NOT ESSENTIAL
This exhibition is part of the Summer series from the FLP x Friends of Nunhead Cemetery Exhibition Program 2025.
Ayesha Sureya’s first solo show - Getting To Know Your Ghosts - is a meditation on merging of physical and spiritual landscapes, on quiet, on invisibles, on before the before, on bodies thumping for life, prayer portals and flying messengers between realms.
The work considers their/one's body, placed in deep time zones - like merging with other bodies like that of water, plants and air.
Objects of prayer and grief permeate the space; here re-appropriated, rooted with symbols and sequences that affirm love beyond and between the human and more, illustrating their immanence. An accumulation of experiments, crafted manifestations and glitchy affirmations of life and resistance circle the space - a paradox of the self and collective body as a stretched out canvas ready to be created over and over again.
Supplementary Events
BLACK FEATHER
Friday 8th August, 17:30 - 19:00
Tickets available HERE on sliding scale - all donations go towards Sameer Project.
We will be facilitating a queer Shraddha - an ancient ritual to honour and provide spiritual sustenance to the life and death of those loved ones around us, ensuring their well-being in the afterlife.
Over four small spices attuned to senses of grief, we will meet and embody - Clove, Turmeric, Chilli and Cinnamon - asking: How do we metabolise the numb, sharp, fiery and sweet? What dialogues are emotional and physical our personal entrails having with our collective ones? What does the gut know?
To honour this, guests are invited to reserve a part of their food, - as prashad (offering) - pressed into a ball to be laid down as part of a mala (prayer bead) - designed for crows around us to eat - reacting as conduits for the souls of our loved ones in the afterlife.
Please join us on Friday 8th of August from 5.30 - 7 pm for this time.
Accessibility Notes
There are 3 small stone steps into the chapel and a ramp can be provided. The chapel is at the end of a gravel path and the stone floors can become slippery, especially in wet weather. This is an outdoor exhibition as there is no roof on the chapel, so please remember to bring weather appropriate apparel.
The nearest train station is Nunhead which does not have step free access. Buses 484, 78, P12 and 343 stop near the cemetery entrance.
About the Artist
Ayesha is an interdisciplinary artist and facilitator born and raised in London. Using their background in jewellery as a conduit for speculating ontological relationships, they explore animism and mediums and messages to express anti-colonial wisdom, decontextualised adornment and mysterious materials - past and futures - that float in open ended and ongoing dialogues between the body and psycho-magic states.
Their practice is led by symbiosis between the cosmos and conditions of consciousness - merging bodies with other bodies both human and not, to somehow locate oneself not just in the world but of it. Figurative forms dance in repetitions illustrating cyclical and divine glitters in nature collapsing time around us.
Ongoing and previous awards and residences include: Blackhorse Road Maker in Residence (UK), Arebyte X Goldsmiths University Artist in Residence (UK), Morley College Jewellery Scholarship (UK) and Al.ter Artist in Residence (IN).
Instagram: @ayesha.sureya
Website: https://ayeshasureyajewellery.com/
