Whitechapel Gallery Takeover: East London Art Prize Late

Get to know some of this year’s East London Art Prize shortlisted artists as they take over Whitechapel Gallery in an after-hours programme featuring a host of music, performances, workshops and screenings. Featuring live performances by Gusty Ferro, Joseph Ijoyemi and Lydia Newman, a collective weaving workshop by Darcey Fleming, a participatory installation by Liang-Jung Chen, a talk by dmstfctn and films by Laisul Hoque, Eugene Macki and Yang Zou, plus DJing by NTS host/resident babyschön.

Get to know some of this year’s East London Art Prize shortlisted artists as they take over Whitechapel Gallery in an after-hours programme featuring a host of music, performances, workshops and screenings. Bring your friends, grab a drink, and bask in the multitude of creativity and imagination that brings together this community of east London artists.

Featuring live performances by Gusty Ferro, Joseph Ijoyemi and Lydia Newman, a collective weaving workshop by Darcey Fleming, a participatory installation by Liang-Jung Chen, a talk by dmstfctn and films by Laisul Hoque, Eugene Macki and Yang Zou, plus DJing by NTS host/resident babyschön.

Find the full programme outlined below.

Please note: Whitechapel Gallery’s spaces have limited capacities – they recommend arriving early to avoid disappointment. Pre-booked free tickets do not guarantee entry if then building reaches capacity. Depending on numbers, they may operate entry on a one-in, one-out basis as well as waitlist in selected areas of the building.

Gallery 2: performances

All activity in Gallery 2 is drop-in, no booking required

6.15-6.45pm: Gusty Ferro and Anelena Toku

A sound performance in response to Gusty’s installation, exploring noise, disruption, and the body’s relationship to the sculptures.

In collaboration with Anelena Toku, the duo creates an intense soundscape by physically interacting with the sculptural pieces in states of displacement. Using contact microphones and modular synthesisers, they capture and amplify vibrations generated through movement. The performance highlights the sonic potential of touch, pressure, and motion—where sound is produced and shaped through direct engagement with the materials.

7.15-7.50pm: Lydia Newman, 'Sand Suit 3.0' (2025)

In 'Sand Suit 3.0' (2025), Lydia Newman creates an embodied storytelling experience weaving personal and ancestral memories and invites the audience to co-facilitate her process of excavating and releasing what contorts her soul’s expression as she embraces rewilding.

The performance also features Lydia’s painting 'In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here' (2024), examining inherited ideas about race, globalisation, class and gender, rooted in the foundations of colonialism as experienced by a descendant of the Black Diaspora.

8.15-9pm: Joseph Ijoyemi, 'Candles in the Dark' (2025)

'Candles in the Dark' (2025) explores social issues related to migration and integration, focusing on the experiences of Black communities. It examines how cultural identity is maintained and reshaped through movement across different places.

Using archives as musical samples, the performance blends pre-recorded tracks with live sound production, incorporating conversations, social media clips, music and everyday sounds. A screen displays text and moving images, creating a visual element that reflects the themes of migration, belonging and cultural influence.

From 6-9pm between the performances at Gallery 2, NTS host/resident babyschön will be DJing.

Creative Studio: drop-in workshop

6:30-8:30pm Large-scale collaborative weaving with Darcey Fleming

The workshop introduces Darcey Fleming’s weaving techniques that make up her immersive installation, ' A Room' (2024), a colourful world she created to connect and communicate with people. Darcey invites visitors to turn their hand to weaving from the discarded baling twines that she finds in the countryside and that are donated to her by local farmers. Baling twine is used to tie hay bales together, after use it is discarded, burnt or added to landfill. Join us in creating a large-scale collaborative weaving – all materials provided!

Study Studio: drop-in interactive installation

6-8.30pm Liang-Jung Chen, UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee (2025)

An interactive installation of Liang-Jung Chen’s two-month performance project 'UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee' (2025), investigating labour precarity, survival strategies and the economic realities faced by many migrants in the country. Through a visual archive of timetables, invoices, video clips and more, Chen presents her first-hand experience of working in on zero-hour and gig-economy jobs across London to earn the funds required to apply for settlement. Join us to participate in Chen’s installation where she turns the costs of UK permanent residency into a form of embodied, artistic labour documentation.

Gallery 3: talk & screening

6.30pm and 7.30pm: ‘AI, a Theatre of Memory’ with dmstfctn

A talk unpacking 'Waluigi’s Purgatory' (2024), the second instalment in dmstfctn’s ongoing GOD MODE trilogy of works about AI anomalies, followed by an interactive screening of the work. Set in a 3D theatre simulated in real-time using a game engine, Waluigi’s Purgatory tells the story of an AI that finds itself in a purgatory for cheating AIs.

Dmstfctn will unpack the lore, references and characters behind the work - inspired by real-world examples of anomalies and cheating in AI, as well as by the ‘Waluigi Effect’ theory, proposing that generative AI may sometimes act rogue due to the large amount of protagonist-antagonist tropes found in internet texts used to train them.

Zilkha Auditorium: Films

6-8.30pm Screenings

Laisul Hoque, The Purpose was to Document the Other Side (2023), 15 minutes

Informed by the exploration of intimate conversation, the film compares the artist's upbringing with that of his mother, addressing generational trauma and confronting the emotional distance from his father. Through this documentary, Laisul Hoque engages in the powerful act of curating their narrative together — vulnerable and emotional. It presents a compelling example of reclaiming personal and familial stories.

Eugene Macki, Anachronism (2024), 2 minutes

A video documenting a performance that explores ideas about mobility, struggle, freedom through limitation, resistance, time, place, distance and measurement. Eugene Macki questions the nature of performing an action, as he is interested in how the body occupies and engages with spaces.

Eugene Macki, Opening Dialogue (2019-20), 7 minutes

An installation performance created in Long Beach, Washington, United States. Eugene Macki uses objects and actions to construct an arena that investigates four types of transformations: translation, rotation, reflection, and dilation, while also investigating the relationship between being and becoming. Being is the immutable, the present, while becoming is the transformation, the constant change.

Yang Zou, I love you, life. I hope it's great again (2024), 23 minutes

A short film documenting the artist’s train journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia over 9 days during the Russia-Ukraine War in 2023. To Yang Zou, it is not just a mere record of his trip but a narrative with various dimensions, from his observations of everyday life on the route – people, food, music and life itself, to memories and imagination – love, secrets, death and power.

There will be photography taken at this event for Bow Arts and Whitechapel Gallery’s internal reporting and for sharing in print and social media.

This event is co-curated by Wan Yi Sandra Lam, Curator: Programmes & Engagement at Bow Arts and Seung Sing Sou, Curator: Public Programmes at Whitechapel Gallery.

Free - Tickets must be booked to guarantee your place!

More about babyschön

babyschön is a London-based DJ. Whether in her live sets or on her weekly Soup to Nuts slot on NTS Radio, she connects the dots between dub, new wave, synth pop and left-field house, always keeping it weird but rhythmic.

As well as regular sets at beloved DIY spots like Gut Level and The Gun, babyschön’s blend of angular guitars, chuggy synths and winding rhythms has taken her to institutions like Karmakoma (Belgrade), Sameheads (Berlin), Hope House (Leeds), the Golden Lion (Todmorden) and the White Hotel (Manchester). She’s also taken the more pumping, sun-soaked end of her collection to Boiler Room Festival, Pike’s, We Out Here and more.

You can find her past radio shows and mixes on the NTS archive or through SoundCloud.

More about Liang-Jung Chen

Liang-Jung Chen is an interdisciplinary artist working across drawing, object, installation and performance. Her practice is deeply informed by material culture in anthropological study which leads her to investigate the usage, consumption, creation and trade of artefacts, as well as the behaviours, norms and rituals associated with them. Intrigued by tensions embedded in everyday scenarios, each series of her work scrutinises a specific interaction between a daily object and its user.

Chen also runs ii (initial initiatives), a design and research-driven creative practice, and hardware archive, a virtual home to a random selection of household hardware items found online and around the world. Selected exhibitions include Regarding the Retractability of Boundaries, V&A, London (2024); Have you had breakfast yet? Hweg, Cornwall (2024); On Tenderness and Time, Daniel Katz Gallery, London (2024); Minus20degree Biennale, Flachau (2024); Plus20degree, Galerie Im Traklhaus, Salzburg (2024); Playing House, Hudson Wilder, New York (2023; The Spout and its Churn Rate, Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2022); Local Ware: cooking edition, Oros, Marseille (2021); The egg rack made a disclaimer 2.0, Now Space, Taipei (2021); The egg rack made a disclaimer 1.0, Error22, Tainan (2020); 1 two 1 two, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020); The Misused 3.0, Coal Drops Yard, London (2020); The Misused 2.0, Taiwan Design Research Institute, Taipei (2020); The Misused 2.0, Piet Hein Eek, Eindhoven (2019).

More about dmstfctn

London-based artist duo dmstfctn, pronounced demystification, explores opaque systems of power through performance, installation, video games and film. Their work often involves audiences directly, inviting them into the ‘demystification’ of systems by replicating and replaying them, and into their ‘remystification’ by building worlds, characters and myths atop them.

Since 2018, dmstfctn have performed and exhibited internationally in venues such as Berghain, Serpentine, Design Museum, HKW and at festivals such as Unsound, CTM, transmediale, Impakt. In 2021, Krisis Publishing released ECHO FX, the duo’s show about Brexit market manipulation later included in Ø (Flatlines/Hyperdub). In 2019, Mille Plateaux released Flash Demons, a collection of performances focusing on financial market crashes. From 1 November 2024 to 31 March 2025, dmstfctn’s video game Godmode Epochs will be exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum as part of Open Systems, curated by Rafi Abdullah and Duncan Bass.

More about Gusty Ferro

Gusty Ferro is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between architecture and the body, as well as the materiality of mundane objects, urban infrastructure and displacement. Their practice spans sound, sculpture, video, drawing, printmaking and installation. By closely observing their surroundings and reflecting on how specific spaces affect emotional states, Ferro creates a sentimental cartography, one that is constantly shifting and redefined with each significant encounter. Their work acts as a form of translation, responding to these lived experiences.

Gusty Ferro previously studied Visual Arts at Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo and at the School of the Damned, UK. They graduated from the Royal Academy Schools post graduation programme in 2025. Selected solo shows include Hello Neighbours at TACO! (London, 2024), Grinding Series at SWG3 Gallery (Glasgow, 2016), Programa de Exposicoes at Centro Cultural São Paulo (2010); and international residencies include Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2016) and Centre de Producció Hangar (Barcelona, 2010). In 2020 Ferro was recipient of the Arts Council England, National Lottery Project Grant and developed research and a new body of work in Blackpool followed by an exhibition at Abingdon Studios.

More about Darcey Fleming

Darcey Fleming works across sculpture, photography, performance, and drawing, often featuring the human body. Her practice embodies a dynamic interplay between the lighthearted and the formal, concealing a deeper emotional undercurrent of loneliness and isolation. Traditional techniques and the use of discarded and humble materials are central to her practice. Using overlooked materials such as recycled twine donated to her by local farmers, Fleming creates immersive environments that protect, hide, free and connect her.

Fleming has exhibited across London, including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023, where David Remfry stated that Fleming’s work ‘captured the true essence of the show’. She has exhibited at MK Gallery, and has a large public sculpture being released later in 2025. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including W Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Plaster Magazine, Pirelli Calendar, Luncheon Magazine, Print Publication, Vogue Portugal, Vogue Scandinavia, on the cover of EXIT magazine, Altered States Magazine, i-D Magazine, TANK Magazine, The Times and The Telegraph. Her works are in Tim Marlow’s (OBE) private collection, and her commission for Soho Farmhouse is the largest artwork in the company’s art collection. Fleming is an artist in residence on the Lee Alexander McQueen Sarabande Foundation. Alongside her art practice, Fleming has a degree from UCL in Social Sciences and is currently completing an MSc at The London School of Economics which further feeds into her practice.

More about Laisul Hoque

Laisul Hoque was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he studied BA English Literature at North South University before completing an MA in Contemporary Photography, Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, UAL, London. Hoque is the winner of East London Art Prize 2025 and a finalist for the 2024 CIRCA Prize. Drawing from his memories and lived experiences, he creates image-based works and installations that explore and decode microhistories and their global impacts. His practice investigates communication, miscommunication, and adopts a reparative reading of the past.

Selected exhibitions / screenings include An Ode to All the Flavours, a day-long Exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Group Screening in the International Program, EXPERIMENTA, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, screened at Piccadilly Lights screen, London, Limes Kurfürstendamm screen, Berlin, Essilor Luxottica screen in Cadorna Square, Milan, as part of CIRCA Prize 2024; An Ode to All the Flavours, Solo Exhibition, Kobi Nazrul Centre, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Solo Screening, Studio 6/6, Dhaka (2024); Shorts: Joyful Lands, Joyful Bodies, Chronic Youth Film Festival, Group Screening, Barbican Centre, London (2024); I Don’t Call Enough but I’m Here Now, Solo Exhibition, Oitij-jo, London (2024).

More about Joseph Ijoyemi

Joseph Ijoyemi is a Swedish-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist whose work combines diverse materials and imagery to tell stories fuelled by life experiences, cultural conversations, and a deep connection to his heritage. His output includes sculptures, multimedia installations, and sound performances, through which he shapes conversations around the African diaspora.

Ijoyemi holds a MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. He has previously won the prestigious Helen Scott Lidgett Award, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard Prize 2023. His works were exhibited at Camden Art Centre, London, and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. Joseph is co-founder of The Collective Makers, and organisation that mentors and empowers young creatives, and he was recently awarded the MEAD Fellowship at UAL for his project Tracing Roots: Exploring Nigerian Heritage Through Ondo’s Treasures.

More about Eugene Macki

Eugene Macki is a visual artist who lives and works in both the UK and the United States. His oeuvre includes a range of media and techniques, such as installation, sculpture, land art, experimental video, performance, and collaborative practice.

Macki is a member and Trustee of the Royal Society of Sculptors (EST 1905, UK) and on the Board of AA2A as a Non-Executive Director. AA2A (EST 1999, UK) delivers an artist residency programme with professional practice development at art and design institutions across England. Between 2012 and 2014, Macki and Barbara Tong founded Void Art Gallery in London. Macki founded Moon Spring in 2019-2022, and launched Peut Guard in 2023 (a project that consists of an artist award, research retreat, curatorial program, and exhibition). His artwork has been displayed in museums, galleries, and outdoor spaces.

More about Lydia Newman

Lydia Newman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, live performance and creative workshop facilitation. With a background in drama and performance making, her work is deeply interconnected, with each discipline bleeding into the others – images from live performances often appear in paintings, while the forms and themes in paintings inform the shapes and concepts in performances. Newman won the second prize of East London Art Prize 2025.

Newman completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021, having previously studied Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Between these programmes, she focused on creative facilitation, delivering self-development programmes grounded in creative practice to communities in the UK and internationally within the charity and NGO sector. Recent performances and exhibitions include Coercive Contortion, The TATE INSTITUTE (2024); The Renovation Revisited, All Hail Disordia, The Anatomy Theatre, Summerhall (2023); Tangled Series, Gallery 32, Barcelona (2023); A Primal Scream, Black Discourse, as part of online exhibition The Body is My First Mother (2021) and site-specific audio journey The Multi-story Time Park, Ilford Shopping Centre (2021). Newman was also a performer in Lygia Clark’s Corpo Coletivo & Elastic Net, Whitechapel Gallery (2024).

More about Yang Zou

Yang Zou is a multidisciplinary visual artist working across film, installation and photography. His work particularly addresses ‘soft power’ – how political narratives are deployed through cultural production by the state to communicate certain principles and aspirations. Combining a purely observational style with poetic elements that focus on people’s emotions, his work is concerned with the misunderstandings between humans and machines as well as the collective anxieties that arise from societal shifts.

Zou worked as a cultural journalist in China for many years before studying in the UK. He holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art and has been selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024.

More about Whitechapel Gallery

Whitechapel Gallery is a ground-breaking arts institution located in the heart of London’s East-End – one of the most diverse and creative quarters in the world. Locally embedded and globally connected, the Gallery was founded in 1901 to enrich the cultural offer for the people of East London.

Over the years, Whitechapel Gallery has played host to some of the world’s most significant and visionary artists, showcasing art from across the globe, including China, Brazil and the Islamic world. Whitechapel Gallery is equally committed to supporting local artists and communities, many of whom come from, or reflect, the many migrants that have made Whitechapel and its surrounding areas their home.

Whitechapel Gallery’s Participation and Outreach programmes prioritise local communities, offering artist-led activities for all ages that encourage curiosity, learning and exchange. Whitechapel Gallery believes that art plays a critical role in firing imaginations, reflecting lived experiences, and opening up new possibilities for thinking, feeling and dreaming.

Access information

Please find the access information of Whitechapel Gallery here.

If you have any questions regarding accessibility at this venue or event, would like to make us aware of any access requirements that you have in advance of visiting, or would like this information in an alternate format including Easy Read, please email info@whitechapelgallery.org or call 020 7522 7888.

Access requirements could include things like providing equipment, services or support (e.g. information in Easy Read, speech to text software, additional 1:1 support), adjusting workshop timings (e.g. more break times), adjustments to the event space (e.g. making sure you have a seat near the entrance) or anything else you can think of!

About the East London Art Prize Events programme

The East London Art Prize events programme is a dynamic, free public programme open to all, which builds on the Prize’s ethos of providing ongoing support, development, and networking opportunities for artists in east London and beyond.

Featuring a constellation of workshops, talks, panels, lates, socials, labs, walks, and takeovers in collaboration with our Prize partners and featuring some familiar faces from our shortlist of 12 fantastic artists, this year’s events programme celebrates and pays homage to the huge abundance of talent and creativity nestled in east London.

These events have been developed by Wan Yi Sandra Lam, Curator: Programmes & Engagement at Bow Arts in collaboration with our Prize partners the British Council, The Line, London College of Fashion (LCF), London Legacy Development Corporation, University College London (UCL), V&A East, Whitechapel Gallery and Dulux.

Find out more about the wider programme here.

More about the East London Art Prize

The East London Art Prize is an all-media art prize designed to showcase the talent of artists working and living in east London, with an accompanying event programme supporting artists’ careers and opportunities. The Prize is generously funded by Minerva and Prue MacLeod. Find out more on the Prize webpage here.