The First Annual Maud Sulter Lecture

The Maud Sulter Lecture aims to amplify the legacy of artist Maud Sulter, her roots in Scotland, and the internationalism of her practice as an artist, photographer, writer, poet, curator, and organiser. From the mid-1980s until she died in 2008, Maud strove to place Black women at the centre of an art history that had excluded them. She also challenged Western art, denouncing the erasure faced by the African diaspora. This inaugural event will be delivered by Scottish poet, playwright, novelist, and former Makar/poet laureate of Scotland, Jackie Kay – who will discuss Maud’s artwork, her relationship to Scotland and Ghana (and Africa more widely), her identity, and way of bringing the past into the present artistically. 

As a special tribute, Jackie will read her long poem A Life in Protest, a poem written in response to Jackie visiting Ingrid Pollard’s exhibition at Glasgow Women’s Library in 2021 which appears in her new book, May Day. Maud has a long association with Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Women’s Library and Glasgow School of Art (and other Scottish institutions), alongside being re-appraised by a new generation of younger artists and creatives. Today, this aligns with an increased and overdue presence of Black artists making art in Scotland.