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THREE GUIDING ENTITIES
2023 -  2025



Ceramic tryptic
‘THE FRIEND‘(2025), ‘THE TRICKSTER’ (2024) and ‘THE PROTECTOR’ (2025)
Counsel to communal and relational: love, story, time travel, agency, determination, journeying, continuum, refusal, joy, descent and sensuality.


Guiding Entities
MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England
17th May - 23rd November 2025Spanning ceramics, film and sound, Tumika’s work draws on Black radical traditions of resistance and creativity. The exhibition takes the River Tees and River Clyde as starting points to reflect on extraction, resistance and the possibility of repair. They describe their practice as “a way of processing collision and untethering” — grappling with being and belonging across temporal, material, and spiritual dimensions. Their work negotiates the charged terrain of museums as sites of cultural construction and colonial legacy.

At its core are three ceramic vessels – THE TRICKSTER, THE FRIEND and THE PROTECTOR – each embodying a distinct character with its own agency. Shaped slowly through improvised processes, the forms were influenced by images, sounds and texts that Tumika encountered during research. The vessels carry stories and hold emotions that quietly disrupt the conventions of the museum.

A new film work blends footage from Middlesbrough, Glasgow and Australia with digital animation. It reflects on memory, colonial legacies and how we might move from extraction toward mutual care. A backdrop of red and black wallpaper sets the stage for the vessels and film and invites new ways of thinking about the collection space they sit within.

This work forms part of 20/20, an ambitious three-year programme led by Decolonising Arts Institute at University of the Arts London (UAL). 20/20 has supported 20 emerging and mid-career ethnically diverse artists of colour to take up residencies with 20 public art collections across the country, leading to 20 new permanent acquisitions. The project is funded by Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants Programme, Freelands Foundation and UAL. 
  



20/20: Futures
Chelsea Space, London, England
6th November 2025 - 18th January 2026The 20/20: Futures exhibition at LCF East Bank celebrates the work of 20 artists who undertook residencies with UK public collections as part of 20/20, an ambitious 3-year programme aimed at catalysing artists’ careers and change in collections, that took place between 2021 and 2024.



tumikastudio[at]gmail.com
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