News Archive

10.21
Engadin Art Talks: Longue Durée (October 14)
External Link
Thursday, Oct 14
7pm
Serpentine Pavilion

Register your attendance for discussion on long term thinking + future perspectives with:
Sumayya Vally, Es Devlin, Anab Jain and Andrew Morlet

Moderated by
Hans Ulrich Obrist

A collaboration between Serpentine and E.A.T./Engadin Art Talks
Related project:
09.21
Social Works II, Gagosian London (October 7 — December 18)
External Link
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill
20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1
Tuesday – Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Curated by Antwaun Sargent, this exhibition foregrounds artists from the African diaspora and their insights into the relationship between space personal, public, institutional, and psychic—and social and artistic practice.

Artists
David Adjaye
Lubaina Himid
Kahlil Robert Irving
Isaac Julien
Rick Lowe
Manuel Mathieu
Tyler Mitchell
Alexandria Smith
Sumayya Vally
Grace Wales Bonner
Amanda Williams
Related project:
09.21
Event | The Virtual Salon: 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (October 14)
External Link
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
19:00 - 20:0pm (BST)

The digital, the virtual, the augmented, the real, the imagined; A.F.K versus I.R.L—the lexicon around our digital world both perplexes and invigorates ‘our’ collective consciousness. In the western world, debates of African digitality often summon references to ‘digital divides’ and social inequity. The reality, in many instances, contrarily exhibits a much more complex picture.

Princess Alia Al-Senussi
Osinachi
Sumayya Vally
Gemma Rolls
Related project:
09.21
Torkwase Dyson: Breathtaking: On Black Beauty and Other Necessary Indeterminacies (September 25 — October 17)
External Link
Opens on Saturday the 25th September and run until the 17th October 2021 - the last of the season.
Serpentine Pavilion
FREE

Torkwase Dyson Notes on sound: Pavilion 2021 Mixed media on 140lb. paper 9 inches x 12 inches (C) Torkwase Dyson, 2021 Photo: Torkwase Dyson
09.21
The Talks #EmergingMasters Series featuring Sumayya Vally
External Link
The Talks present Emerging Masters, a new series of interviews with the extraordinary talents shaping the future of creativity.

Featuring architect Sumayya Vally, fashion designer Maisie Schloss, chef Dieuveil Malonga, filmmaker Ferdinando Filomarino, musician Arlo Parks and filmmaker Agustina San Martin.
09.21
Event | Belonging Resistance: An Evening of Readings at New Beacon Books (September 24)
External Link
Offsite
Friday September 24, 2021

In collaboration with Sumayya Vally of Counterspace, throughout September and October a series of live events will take place at partner venues where the Fragments of the Serpentine Pavilion 2021 are placed. This event is sold out but a recording will be available online in the coming weeks.
Related project:
09.21
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (September 22 — January 2)
External Link
The Architecture Room, curated by Sir David Adjaye RA, considers architecture through the expression of ‘Climate and Geography (or vice versa)’ focusing on the context of site, geography, climate, political climate, people, community and culture.
A study of London/Serpentine Pavilion 2020/1 by Sumayya Vally, Counterpace has been selected and will be on show alongside contributions from Farshid Moussavi Sean Canty, Atelier Masomi and many more.

Find out more: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk
09.21
SOM Foundation Announces Jury for the 2021 European Research Prize
External Link
The inaugural jury will be led by SOM Foundation Executive Director Iker Gil and will include Marco Ferrari (Cofounder of Studio Folder, Milan), Kent Jackson (Partner of SOM, London and Secretary of the SOM Foundation), Tim Marlow (Chief Executive and Director of the Design Museum, London), Débora Mesa Molina (Principal of Ensamble Studio, Boston and Madrid), and Sumayya Vally (Founder and Principal of Count
09.21
Wallpaper* Frieze Sculpture 2021: A vibrant, political and cross-generational return
External Link
In an exciting new addition, Serpentine Galleries and Sumayya Vally, founder of architectural practice Counterspace (profiled in Wallpaper’s May 2021 issue) will present Fragment of Serpentine Pavilion for Frieze Sculpture Park, 2021, marking the first time a public institution has participated in Frieze Sculpture.
Related project:
09.21
Deem Journal: New Forms of Articulation | Sumayya Vally in conversation with Esther Choi
External Link
'It is a gift to imagine something and to see it being realized, even more of a gift to see it being lived, and to be a part of working with its life. We convene in buildings and we are convened by building—the act of making this pavilion has been and is a coming together and a growing gathering of so many voices, past, present, future. I am honored that it’s not mine anymore, that it belongs to the world...'
Related project:
09.21
Sumayya Vally named Pelli Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, Illinois School of Architecture
External Link
Also available via Zoom, click on the link above to register.

'We are excited about this unique collaboration & its possibilities’ Director Francisco Javier Rodríguez today announced that Sumayya Vally will be the Pelli Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Illinois School of Architecture.
08.21
Ain Bailey: Atlantic Railton (August 26 — September 24)
External Link
Opens Friday the 26th August and runs till the 24th September
Serpentine Pavilion
Daily at 11am and 5pm *(10th + 17th September 11am & 4pm / 11th September 11am only)
Free

The new sound work by the artist Ain Bailey brings together a series of intimate conversations led by the artist’s collaborators Sharon Elliott, Claudette Parry, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinksi and Marc Thompson that sonically reflect on the memories, actions and relationships held in these sites of community care and resistance.
Related project:
08.21
Frieze Sculpture (September 14 — October 31)
External Link
Opens Tuesday 14th September and runs till the 31st October 2021
Free and open to all.

Visit a Fragment of the Serpentine Pavilion at Frieze Sculpture in The Regent's Park.
This year’s selection of works addresses themes including architecture, geopolitical power structures and environmental concern.
Related project:
08.21
Event | Berlin Questions: Metropolis – The New Now (August 11)
External Link
Tuesday, August 11
15:00 - 16:00 (CET)

Sumayya Vally presents 'On Constructing Belonging' at this years annual conference Berlin Questions.
Followed by a live-remote with Dorte Mandrup

Livestream via the Berlin Questions website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxtVg8KMFU
Related project:
08.21
Recipients of Support Structures for Support Structures Announced
External Link
Introducing the inaugural recipients of the new fellowship programme supporting artists working at the intersection of art, spatial politics and community practice.

Barby Asante
Beverley Bennett
Jacob V Joyce
Abbas Zahedi
Blak Outside
Ferarts Collective
Nawi Collective
Other Cinemas
Skin Deep
RESOLVE Collective
Related project:
07.21
Jay Bernard: Crystals of this Social Substance (July 25 — August 25)
External Link
Serpentine Pavilion
Daily at 5pm
A new sound work by the artist Jay Bernard, commissioned by Serpentine Education for Listening to the City.
Developed through a series of intimate workshops staged during summer '21, the artist invited eight young people to talk about money. Bernard locates the piece in the specific triangle of London’s Tulse Hill, Brixton and Herne Hill neighbourhoods, an area where they grew up, currently live, and situate as “a curious mix of deprivation and hyper-privilege”
Related project:
07.21
Lecture | RCA InsideOut Series: Sumayya Vally In Conversation (July 5)
Inside/Out: Sumayya Vally In Conversation
External Link
Tuesday, July 5
19:00 BST
Serpentine Pavilion
A special Livestream of the final instalment of Inside/Out 2020/21 from Royal College of Art, Interior Design
Sumayya Vally in conversation with Natalia Grabowska
Livestream via https://youtu.be/jA5bOPrxDLI
Related project:
07.21
Sunday Times: How Joburg architect Sumayya Vally is shaping the world’s future
External Link
In pursuing diverse identities and cultures in her design, Vally is imagining a design language and expression for Africa, which recognises its past and futures.
- Claire Keeton, Times LIVE
06.21
Brian Eno: In A Garden (19 June — 23 July)
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
External Link
For his contribution to Back to Earth, Brian Eno has composed a layered, stratified construction of sonic material, titled IN A GARDEN (2021) that moves through the Pavilion, from the earth beneath visitors’ feet to the space above their heads.
Related project:
06.21
Azure Magazine: Counterspace Unveils Their Fragmented Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
External Link
Standing more than six metres tall in Kensington Gardens, almost meeting the height of the trees surrounding it, the two-tone, open-air edifice – pale pink rendered cement mix for the interior and dark grey cork for the exterior – rises above a raised concrete platform.
Related project:
06.21
Event | CogX Festival: Designing Impact (June 15 )
#CogX2021
External Link
Wednesday 15th June 2021
16:00 — 16:40 pm CET
Curated with: Boster Group

Designer Yves Béhar (Founder, fuseproject) and Sumayya Vally (Founder, Counterspace Studio) join Boster Group CEO, Susan Boster, to explore how creativity in design and architecture influences behaviour and, through innovative partnerships, becomes part of the solution to major global challenges.
06.21
ArtReview: A Deeply Satisfying Architectural Richness
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
External Link
Sumayya Vally’s summer structure is composed of humble steps, seats, doorways and railings representing migrant meeting-spaces across London.
Related project:
06.21
ICON: A Tribute to Ordinary London
Fragment of Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion for Valence Library in the Becontree estate. Photo: George Darrell
External Link
Designed by Counterspace, the pavilion highlights places significant to London’s migrant communities, as well as the threat posed by gentrification
Related project:
06.21
Evening Standard: “an inclusive space full of ideas”
Evening Standard Sumayya Vally
External Link
★★★★☆
By Robert Bevan
Counterspace have come up with an inclusive space full of ideas.
The youngest architect to design the annual showcase has created a structure that reaches out to London.
Related project:
06.21
Surface: Pieces of London Come Together at Counterspace’s Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
External Link
After a year-long delay due to the pandemic, the 20th Serpentine Pavilion opens with a community-minded installation by promising young Johannesburg studio Counterspace.
06.21
Financial Times: “smooth, elegant – and radical”
External Link
Serpentine Pavilion brings migrant meeting points to posh Kensington Gardens
by Edwin Heathcote
Related project:
05.21
140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth
External Link
As part of Serpentine’s Back to Earth project and in collaboration with Penguin Press, 140 artists, scientists, architects, filmmakers and more contribute ideas to a ‘do-it-yourself’ guide on how to shape a more ecological and equitable future.
05.21
Exhibition | Liminal Identities in the Global South (June 29 — 29 January 29)
Liminal Identities in the Global South
External Link
Opens: 29 June 2021- 29 January 2022
Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation
Exploring the political and pandemic body, through concepts of hybridity and resistance in the artistic practices of seminal women artists and architects.
Related project:
05.21
The 20th Serpentine Pavilion Opens 11 June
Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Counterspace
External Link
The 20th Serpentine Pavilion is designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace, directed by Sumayya Vally. A TIME100 Next List honouree, Vally is the youngest architect to be commissioned for this internationally renowned architecture programme.
Related project:
04.21
Wallpaper*: Sumayya Vally on her Serpentine Pavilion
External Link
Counterspace is the fast-emerging South African architectural practice commissioned to create the latest Serpentine Pavilion in London. Here, its founder Sumayya Vally takes artist and photographer Mikhael Subotzky on a whistle-stop tour of their adopted hometown, Johannesburg
Related project:
04.21
Talk | Starting an Architecture Office with Sumayya Vally (April 8)
External Link
Season Two Office Hours / Hour #25
Join us at 12pm ET / 6pm SAST
An open discussion and interactive Q&A for BIPOC students and emerging designers about how Sumayya started Counterspace and her advice to those interested in architectural and spatial forms of social and political engagement.
03.21
Talk | Lesley Lokko & Sumayya Vally, Counterparts: This Fragile Condition (March 30)
Lesley Lokko + Sumayya Vally, Counterparts:
External Link
Counterparts presents a dialogue that has been developing between Lesley Lokko and Sumayya Vally for the last six years. It is an event full of ‘betweens’ - between a performance and a presentation; between women; between generations; between disciplines; between time and territory; between talking and telling; between teaching and testing; between words and images, thoughts and things. In short, Counterparts are betwixt and between.
03.21
e-flux Architecture: Choreography of A Procession
From behind the barricaded fence of blue dress uniforms and riot shields, they sing the Amakomanisi struggle song" Ubaba wami wayengumfana wasengadini, umama wayeyintombazane yasekhishini, yingakho ngingumKhomanisi " ("My father was a garden boy, my mother was a kitchen girl, and that’s why I am a communist!"). Sumayya Vally, Choreography of a Procession , 2021.
External Link
Confinement is a collaborative exhibition curated by gta exhibitions and e-flux Architecture, supported by the Adrian Weiss Stiftung and the ETH Zürich Foundation.
03.21
Talk | Scarcity as a Tool to Create Narratives for/from the South with Frida Escobedo & Sumayya Vally (March 19 )
External Link
Gensler Visiting Critic Studio Talks

This studio proposes to research, experiment, and produce architectural spaces from the ABUNDANCE of SCARCITIES by focusing on two regions that represent a considerable part of the global south (the South American / the African), two geographical areas that are similar in their cultural complexities and architectural processes (Latin America / North Africa) with the perspective of two architects from these regions (Latin America / North Africa)
03.21
Bubblegum Club TV: Sumayya Vally in Conversation with Nolan Dennis Oswald
External Link
The 4th episode of Bubblegum Connects, one of Time magazine's 100 leaders of the future, architect and educator; Sumayya Vally, is joined in conversation by interdisciplinary artist and friend Nolan Dennis Oswald at our studio space.
02.21
The Africa2020 September Summit with Sumayya Vally, Emanuel Admassu, Ola Uduku and Ola Hassanain
External Link
Musée Quai Branly
Sunday February 28th 2021, 6 PM

Reflecting on how Black urban practices emerge as strategies of resistance that disrupt the spatial legacies of colonial power in Africa, and how they create spaces of radical imagination within and against anti-Black environments.
02.21
Sumayya Vally to judge Dezeen Awards 2021
Interior designer Anouska Hempel and collaborators Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann will be joined by Sri Lankan designer and structural engineer Cecil Balmond and South African architect Sumayya Vally to judge Dezeen Awards 2021
External Link
Sumayya Vally and Sri Lankan designer and structural engineer Cecil Balmond join interior designer Anouska Hempel and collaborators Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann to judge Dezeen Awards 2021.
02.21
Lecture | Architectural Association: A New Model For Listening (February 18)
A New Model for Listening Sumayya Vally, Counterspace
External Link
18:00 - 19:30 BST
Thursday 18 February 2021

Join Sumayya Vally’s ‘New Model for Listening’ Lecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London as part of their Public Programme #NewModels Series led by Manijeh Verghese
02.21
TIME100 Next List Honoree, Sumayya Vally
External Link
“There is absolutely another canon, it’s up to us to dream it.” Sumayya Vally
02.21
Talk | Contemporary Conversations: The Legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude (8 February)
Contemporary Conversations: The Legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude
External Link
Tuesday 8th February 2021
19:30 PM CET
Join Sotheby's Simon Shaw in conversation with Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artist JR and Architect Sumayya Vally, celebrating the legacy of Christo & Jeanne-Claude, and their influence on contemporary artists.
01.21
Talk | World Around Summit 2021: Keepers of The World Around, Guggenheim Museum (January 30)
The World Around Summit 2021 Session Two - Keepers of The World Around
External Link
Streamed live on 30 January 2021
Marking the launch of a year-long residency at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, The World Around presents twenty groundbreaking projects from the past year as well as insights into work in the making at its second annual summit.

Featuring Umhlaba presented by Sumayya Vally, Counterspace
01.21
artnet: Slow Down the Mega-Galleries, Empower Black Collectors, and 14 Other Changes…
External Link
12.20
Film | Sumayya Vally, Ingesting Architectures: The Understory of the Understory (December 6)
External Link
5th & 6th December 2020
The Understory of the Understory is the fourth instalment in an ongoing series of festivals on consciousness and intelligence across species, part of the Serpentine’s General Ecology project. With The Understory of the Understory, we go to that place which is simultaneously ground, land, soil and Earth, that is to say, the place where diverse species come together, collaborate, communicate and
Related project:
12.20
Serpentine Gallery Symposium | Yasmeen Lari & Sumayya Vally: Letters to architecture, the planet and a love letter to a young architect of colour (6 December)
Yasmeen Lari in conversation with Sumayya Vally – The Understory of the Understory
External Link
Sunday 6th December 2020
12pm-1:30pm GMT
Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, Introduction
Yasmeen Lari and Sumayya Vally, Letters to architecture, letters to the planet and a love letter to a young architect of colour
Tim Ingold, Creatures of the soil, reborn
Daisy Lafarge, Life Without Air
Andrew Adamatzky in conversation with Merlin Sheldrake
Kostas Stasinopoulos, Introduction
Adham Faramawy, The air is subtle, various and sweet
Jay G. Ying, Requiem
Related project:
12.20
Artnet: ‘I want to build differently’ Sumayya Vally
External Link
Meet Sumayya Vally, the Youngest Architect Ever to Win the Prestigious Serpentine Pavilion Commission
11.20
artnet: 25 Inspiring Women in the Art World Who Overcame Obstacles to Accomplish …
Vally is forging a new canon of African architecture that factors in social concerns as well as issues of sustainability.
External Link
10.20
Catalogue 4.5 Journal and Hans Ulrich Obrist: ‘What is your unrealised project?’
CATALOGUE 4.5, the new issue, is the magazine as a special edition. Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, invited as Guest Editor, has asked 39 new-generation artists to share their unrealised projects.
External Link
Summaya Vally joins 38 new-generation artists in sharing their unrealised projects for CATALOGUE 4.5, the art journal published by Cork Street Galleries, guest-edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Related project:
10.20
25 Thought Leaders on the Esteemed A+Firm Awards Jury: Sumayya Vally
External Link
09.20
Lecture | Sumayya Vally: Counterpoints at The Cooper Union (November 24)
cooper.edu VISITING LECTURE | SUMAYYA VALLY, COUNTERSPACE STUDIO: COUNTERPOINTS
External Link
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
12:00-14:00 ET

This event will be conducted through Zoom. Please register in advance via the link above. Zoom account registration is required.
The lecture will be followed by a public live discussion including Lesley Lokko as respondent.
09.20
Therme Art Conference | Breaking Bauhaus: Renewing its Principles 100 Years Later (September 11)
BREAKING BAUHAUS – RENEWING ITS PRINCIPLES 100 YEARS LATER
External Link
Friday 11th September 2020
13:00-14.30pm CEST

St. Agnes Alexandrinenstraße 118 - 121, 10969 Berlin
& via Livestream
07.20
Film | Yoyo Ma x Google: Culture of Comfort with Sumayya Vally
In collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, we asked 10 cultural leaders from around the world to share the art and culture that comforts them. Sumayya Vally tells us how she seeks comfort in the soul of a place.
External Link
In collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, we asked 10 cultural leaders from around the world to share the art and culture that comforts them. Sumayya Vally tells us how she seeks comfort in the soul of a place.
07.20
Unibz Conference: 5×2 Summer Conversation – A conversation with Sumayya Vally
External Link
07.20
Film | Storefront TV: Collective Wakes (and Other Spatial Acts of Resistance)
Storefront TV: Season 3, Episode 3 – Collective Wakes (and Other Spatial Acts of Resistance)
External Link
StorefrontTV Season 3: On Maintenance
Wednesday, July 8th, 2020 from 6:00-6:10 pm ET
Episodes of StorefrontTV Season 3 will air weekly on Wednesdays at 6 pm ET on Storefront’s website, as well as on YouTube and Instagram Live. Each episode is brief, usually between 5-10 minutes.

In Collective Wakes (and Other Spatial Acts of Resistance), is screened as part of the third episode of StorefrontTV Season 3.Sumayya Vally presents a choreography of “wakes,” both difficult and celebratory.
Related project:
06.20
LFA Manifestos: Architecture for a New Generation
Manifestos - Architecture for a New Generation
External Link
"There is no neutral ground. All territories are bound." - A Manifesto for Change by Sumayya Vally, Countersapce

'Manifestos: Architecture for a New Generation' is an annual collaboration between London Festival of Architecture and the Design Museum, highlighting work by an emerging generation of voices in architecture who are expanding the parameters of what architecture can be, who London is for and what its future holds.
05.20
Dezeen: Therme Art and VDF Conference – The Relationship between Art and Architecture
Therme Art and VDF present a live panel discussion on the relationship between art and architecture
External Link
04.20
Sciame Lecture Series | Counterspace (April 4)
External Link
Monday 6th April 2020
17:30PM (ET)

Speakes:
Sumayya Vally and Sarah de Villiers, principals, Counterspace
Lesley Lokko, Dean, The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CCNY
03.20
New Frame: Counterspace: Architecture should be a force for change
External Link
01.20
Domus: Counterspace featured as one of 100+ best architecture firms
External Link
01.20
Film: Yokohama Triennale 2020 – Ingesting Architectures: On Atmospheric Violences
This presentation was part of Episōdo 03: Chasing the Scent, an inhabitation of time convened through Yokohama Triennale 2020.
External Link
10.19
Sam Jacob Studio: Pattern as Politics
Sumayya Vally, Hybrid 12, 2019
External Link
Curated by Sam Jacob and Priya Khanchandani for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019, at Culturgest, as part of What is Ornament?
09.19
Event | GSA Conference: GSA Conversation Rooms 1
External Link
Tuesday 10th September 2019
08:00-18:00 UTC+01
The 2019 GSA History and Theory Colloquium will take the form of the first in a series of ‘conversation rooms’, understood as public events to facilitate an open-ended dialogue on and from our location in Johannesburg.
Related project:
01.19
Dezeen: Counterspace creates Folded Skies installation
External Link
08.18
Chicago Architecture Biennale: Lost and Found by Counterspace
External Link