RCA BLK Residencies

The Royal College of Art Association of Black Students, Alumni & Friends, or RCA BLK, started as a grassroots organisation and community group in 2020. The association aims to promote, improve and advance education by encouraging and supporting the practice of contemporary visual artists who identify as Black within the RCA’s wider community. They do so by fostering relationships with pre-enrolled students, current students as well as alumni. RCA BLK makes its impact on students' experience from the African diaspora and builds upon the rich legacies of the RCA student body.

RCABLK is the initiator of the the RCA BLK x Yinka Shonibare Residency, among other such initiatives. Piloting in 2024 with two spring residencies, they aim to continue to support artists to undertake residencies in Nigeria in the long term.

Remi Kuforiji

United Kingdom | Mar 2024

Remi Kuforiji (London, 1997) is an architect, spatial practitioner and researcher whose creative practice explores the intersection of performance, cartography and racial politics. Developing systems of critique that challenge territorial distinctions and neocolonial policies of resource extractivism, Remi's work focuses on wetland ecosystems, indigenous knowledge and ethnographic methodologies as modes of spatial practice.

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Graeme Smith

United Kingdom | Mar 2024

Graeme is an artist and draftsman of Jamaican-British descent born in Treaty 1 Canadian territory. He is an RCA alumnus interested in craft as a fugitive and subjugated knowledge. He explores process, transposition, and spatial poetics working primarily with ceramics and glass.

He will continue a study of Nigerian glass beads during his residency at Guest Artists Space Foundation. The small, historically ubiquitous, idiosyncratic glass crafts with complex origins and manifold journeys traded and moved between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.

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Gaia Ozwyn

United Kingdom | March - April 2025

Gaia Ozwyn is a London-based contemporary artist whose unique practice weaves together the tactile and visual contrast between concrete sculpture and painterly technique, to explore themes of loneliness and ‘othering’. Born in 1991 to a Caribbean-British family, Ozwyn's multifaceted identity deeply informs her work, prompting a nuanced exploration of belonging and 'otherness.' Initially pursuing a career in the sciences, Ozwyn received training as a biomedical scientist and later studied Medicine, dedicating several years to serving as a Doctor in the NHS. Ozwyn pivoted to a full-time painting practice and has since completed a painting MA at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship.

Ozwyn delves into the realm of the imagined and sublime, creating spaces where solitude and belonging coexist, challenging binary perceptions. Her work stands as a dialogue between solidity and transience, engaging the observer in a tactile and contemplative experience.

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