Material Material Material

RCA BLK is pleased to present Material Material Material, an in-conversation featuring Marlene Smith, Zinzi Minott, and Sani Sani.

Bringing together three artists whose practices are deeply rooted in material exploration, the conversation will examine the role of materiality as a site of memory, making, and transformation. Through reflections on their individual practices, the artists will consider what it means to be a maker in the present moment, exploring how materials carry histories, shape identities, and create new possibilities for artistic expression.

Moving between personal narratives and collective experiences, the discussion will open up broader conversations around time, generation, collectivity, and the evolving nature of contemporary practice. Together, the artists will reflect on how making becomes a way of thinking, remembering, and imagining new futures.

Artist's Bio:

Marlene Smith is a British artist and curator, and one of the founding members of the BLK

Art Group. She was director of The Public in West Bromwich and UK Research Manager for Black Artists and Modernism, a collaborative research project run by the University of the Arts London and Middlesex University. She set up the Blk Art Group Research Project with former group members, Claudette Johnson and Keith Piper in 2011.

Her solo show, Ah Sugar, opened in August 2024 at Cubitt Gallery, London and toured to the Reid Gallery at Glasgow School of Art. She exhibited work as part of ‘Connecting Thin Black Lines’ at the ICA London 2025;‘Women in Revolt!’ at Tate Britain; ‘The More Things Change’ at Wolverhampton Art Gallery; ‘Cut & Mix’ New Art Exchange, Nottingham; ‘The Place Is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain’ Nottingham Contemporary.

Her work is in collections at Tate, Sheffield Museuns, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Government Art Collection.

Zinzi Minott is known for her award winning, materially sensitive conceptual practice, which builds intense worlds across multiple media. Working from an installation based perspective she creates spaces that are atmospherically intense, temporally charged and hermetically sealed. She’s exhibited nationally and internationally and lives and works in London. 

Moving between painting, film, sound, print, sculpture and performance her practice frequently considers what it means to have a body. Across mediums, her works are marked by a strong sense of liveness,movement and temporality. Minott  is in frequent dialogue with formal devices repetition, duration and exhaustion as physical, social, structural conditions. She favours archive and broken fragments, unfinished stories frequently collaborating with historically charged material, the in-between, the absence and the silences within histories.

Central to her considerations is the exploration of Black/ness as visual and embodied conditions. Minott’s practice engages with chiaroscuro across painting, film, installation and performance, using shifts between light, darkness, visibility and obscurity to destabilise perception and shape atmosphere. Through surface, sound, and spatial composition, forms, and moments, emerge, dissolve and transform through the act of looking, making a material of perception and uncertainty.

Sani Sani , known professionally as INxSANIxTY, is a contemporary British-Nigerian visual artist from Peckham, Southeast London. Born in London and raised between the UK and Nigeria, his formative years immersed him in a rich blend of cultural influences that deeply shape his creative perspective and choice of materials. Sani initially studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Brighton before pivoting fully to fine art. He subsequently advanced his practice at the Royal College of Art, earning a Postgraduate Diploma and pursuing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice, supported by the prestigious Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship.

His multidisciplinary work brings together process-driven wood assemblies, newspaper sculptures, painting, and low-fi digital installations. Guided by core principles of resourcefulness, community building, and "art as currency," Sani upcycles reclaimed and everyday materials to question traditional ideas of institutional value. His evocative projects explore the shared human experience, sparking critical conversations around migration, displacement, identity, and colonial restitution. A strong advocate for public engagement, Sani has developed site-specific projects and interactive workshops alongside prominent cultural institutions, including Tate Modern, the South London Gallery, and the Barbican Centre Library.

For any access requirements or to discuss accessibility needs, please contact us at rca-blk@rca.ac.uk. We are committed to making our events as accessible as possible and will do our best to accommodate your requirements.