About the publication
We are delighted to publish this new soft cover book to accompany Toronto-based artist Sukaina Kubba’s first major solo exhibition in a UK institution. Both the exhibition and publication – the first dedicated to Kubba’s practice – are titled Turn Me Into a Flower.
The artist’s work is strongly rooted in material and cultural research, storytelling, and drawing connections. Her multidisciplinary practice spans the mediums of drawing, painting, printmaking, fibres, audio, video and installation, and explores narratives of cultural and material assimilation and appropriation. For the exhibition, she created a new body of work in DCA Print Studio through a production residency in January 2024, including screenprint, paper pulp casting, embossing and laser etching.
This publication has been edited by DCA, bringing together texts commissioned by DCA and Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art in Toronto, where Kubba has had overlapping projects across 2024. For Kubba’s year-long SPACE commission she created three consecutive new works for a billboard sited externally at Mercer Union, two of which were subsequently shown in her exhibition at DCA. With the support of the British Council Scotland, Creative Scotland and the Québec Government Office in London, we have been able to expand the scope of this publication, bringing together five texts commissioned by DCA and Mercer Union into a single space.
The publication includes a new poem by Glasgow-based poet and writer Daisy Lafarge, and an interview between Kubba and Montreal-based artist and curator Swapnaa Tamhane. These bookend three texts commissioned by Mercer Union to accompany Kubba’s billboard series, from Ami Xherro, Natascha Nanji and a second poem from Daisy Lafarge. It also contains a preface by DCA’s Head of Exhibitions, Tiffany Boyle, and full colour images of Kubba’s exhibition at DCA.
About Sukaina Kubba
Sukaina Kubba is an Iraqi-born, Toronto-based artist. She was in-residence at La Wayaka Current, Atacama Desert, Chile in 2022, and at ISCP International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York in 2022 and 2023. Kubba is currently showing as part of the year-long SPACE Billboard commission at Mercer Union, Toronto, and at Greater Toronto Art 2024 Triennial at Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at the plumb, Toronto (2023); The Next Contemporary, Toronto (2023); Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2017); Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2016); and Glasgow International (2014, 2016). Kubba is a sessional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, and previously served as curator and lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art (2013–2018).
| Date | July 2024 |
| Edition of | 500 |
| Design | Valerie Norris |
| ISBN | 978-1-8382711-6-9 |
| Dimensions | 21.6 x 16.4cm |
| Pages | 64pp |
About the writers
Daisy Lafarge is a writer based in Glasgow, UK. Born in Hastings, she has lived in Scotland since 2011. She is the author of the novel Paul (Granta 2021; Riverhead 2022), which won a Betty Trask Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and the poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta 2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and awarded Scottish Poetry Book of the Year. Lovebug, a short book on the poetics of infection, was published by Peninsula Press in 2023. Her reviews and essays on ecology, art and literature have been widely published, appearing in Granta, LitHub, The New York Times, Art Review, TANK Magazine, The White Review, and elsewhere.
Natascha Nanji is a writer and artist currently based in London. Via speculations and mythologies, her research plots future and past histories into the present day, often tracing migratory routes of people and objects. She is co-editor & publisher of LAY IT ON THICK, a literary magazine about queer desire and erotics, and co-runs The Theatre Group. Most recently her work has been commissioned for the 14th Annual Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver (2022); Spike Island, Bristol (2022); and feminist press Sticky Fingers (2021).
Swapnaa Tamhane is a Toronto-born artist, curator and writer based in Montreal, Canada. Working to destabilise and untether colonial constructs, her process focuses on drawing and making paper. Her curatorial research considers contemporary art and design histories of India focusing on feminist histories. Tamhane has been a Research Fellow with renowned Canadian and international institutions, and she has been supported by granting bodies including Canada Council for the Arts, and Kunststiftung NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), and Kulturstiftung des Bundes/International Museum Fellow. Her work has been exhibited at A Space Gallery, Toronto; Nature Morte, Delhi; articule, Montreal; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia; and V&A Dundee.
Ami Xherro is a poet. Her work draws out the incomprehensible from the ordinary, playing with logics and feelings of association. She is the author of Drank, Recruited (Guernica Editions, 2023), which was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, and The Unfinished Flame (Swimmers Group, 2017). She has contributed writing to publications including The Brooklyn Review, Ugly Duckling Presse, The Capilano Review, The Ex-Puritan, and Metatron. She is a co-founder of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective (TETC) and co-edits Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism & Translation.
