Speaking Futures
WIP: Sharing Space with RIEKO
Institute of Contemporary Arts x 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning
12 August, 2025
As part of the year-long residency at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), we are collaborating with the ICA and the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning (198 CAL) based in Brixton on a series of work in progress performances and work sharing. WIP: Sharing Space highlights the importance of seeing work that is unfinished and still in transition, and celebrates dialogue and collaboration, inviting feedback from the audience and conversation between the artists. For each session, creatives from the ICA and the 198 CAL are paired with a Diasporas Now artist to encourage skill-sharing, mentorship and collaboration for young artists.
Taking place at 198 CAL, the second instalment in the series is a work in progress performance by RIEKO. RIEKO is joined by ICA Creative, Miro Alleyne-McCarthy and 198 CAL artists, Xueting Chen and duo Ayomide Tejuoso & Brutus Labiche (Sandra Habiyambere).
WIP: Sharing Space highlights the importance of engaging with work that is unfinished and in progress. It celebrates dialogue and collaboration, inviting feedback from audiences and fostering conversations between artists. For this year’s edition we are pairing ICA Creatives with artists from Diasporas Now to encourage skill-sharing, mentorship, and creative exchange among emerging artists.
Diasporas Now x ICA programmes are in media partnership with AnOther Magazine, and programmed by curator Hannah Geddes from ICA and Artistic Director Nimco Kulmiye Hussein from 198 CAL.
Image courtesy of Diasporas Now, photographed by Lulu Wang
About Artists
RIEKO
RIEKO (Rieko Whitfield) is an artist, composer, and neoritualist, and the Founding Director of Diasporas Now. Her interdisciplinary practice brings together music, mythology, and live performance to create immersive, transformative worlds grounded in spiritual exploration. Blending ritual performance, experimental sound, collective healing workshops, curating, and community organising, her work explores alternative ways of imagining and shaping the future.
Miro Alleyne-McCarthy
Miro Alleyne-McCarthy is a Bajan-British filmmaker and visual artist whose work explores the intersections of myth and magic, and the shifting boundaries between past, future, and an infinite present. His practice is rooted in digital experimentation—whether behind the lens or within software, he continually pushes the limits of form and narrative.
Xueting Chen
Xueting Chen (China) is a London-based interdisciplinary artist. Drawing on a background in both civil engineering and fine art, she challenges the conventional uses of industrial materials, creating world-like systems through rough imitation and the reconstruction of real things. Her work intentionally overlooks certain aspects of history, focusing instead on possibilities and contingencies to open new perspectives on the future.
Brutus Labiche and Ayomide Tejuoso
Brutus Labiche and Ayomide Tejuoso are visual artists, writers, and researchers based in Vevey and London, respectively. Their collaborative methodology is grounded in Black diasporic feminist frameworks, material experimentation, and recursive dialogue. Together, they are creating MINA – a long-term, research-driven mythology composed of photographs, films, sculptures, essays, performances, and installations. Through sociological and conceptual art systems, they construct mythologies that affirm and archive Black feminine epistemologies.