n:u (melissandre varin), On Substance, 2025. Future Ritual: CEREMONY. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.
pharmakon
n:u (melissandre varin)
Fri 17 April
3:00 - 4:00pm
Duration: 60 mins
Access Key: V
‘The stool of a chief, a statue used for worship, an ancestor’s image, a pipe with tobacco still in it, a comb, a vessel to contain food’
YOU HIDE ME by Nii Kwate Owoo (1970)
A personal and global tracing of lineages of substance (ab)use. Elements such as soil, whisky, and molasses - echoing extractivism - are juxtaposed with some of their ritualistic usages. Consumption of culture, race, gender, spirituality, religion, and food is questioned in this offering.
With vulnerability and complicity, n:u (melissandre varin) interrogates healing as destruction and destruction as healing.
Credits:
commissioned by Future Ritual // credit: n:u (melissandre varin), On Substance, 2025.
Content Notes:
Themes of substance (ab)use, pillaging, and colonialism.
Audiences will be invited to consume alcohol, sugar cane (optional.) Contact with soil.
Allergen Warnings:
Whisky & Mollasses. Physical contact with soil.
n:u (melissandre varin), On Substance, 2025. Future Ritual: CEREMONY. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.
n:u (melissandre varin) (b. Gonesse, France, 1992) is an atmosphere-maker based in Birmingham UK, with a practice rooted in Congolese, Guadeloupean, and Beninese heritages. Building upon (more than) human, cross-border collaborations, they unearth ancestral ceremonies to be with change. Their work manifests as liberatory infrastructures, performances, sculptures, and installations. They play with unexpected pairings between materials, bodies, and concepts, disrupting colonial binaries and dominant narratives.
n:u combines intuitive, embodied-knowledge in artmaking with a political ecology approach grounded by an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College of London (UCL).
Their experimental practice unfolds with emotional excavation, ancestrality and devotional use of materials (rum, oil, soil, hair), as well as curatorial reparative initiatives, such as les ongles noirs dirty nails (Dakar–Birmingham, 2022–24), B.O.O.K (supporting Black artists in the UK, 2020–23), Open Call (archived platform for artist-researchers, 2020-23) and PAPAYA (Luxembourg-UK afro-feminist collective, 2019–23).
n:u is an Axis Fellow (2025-26), Feeney fellow (2025-26), a CVAN WM steering group member (2025-28). They have collaborated with Agnes Essonti Luque, Giulia Casalini, and Maria Muehombo. They have been invited to create atmospheres by organisations such as Eastside Projects, Ban Workshop, Ambassade de France x l’Institut français du Bénin -programme Inspiration Bénin, au cœur des mondes Africains, Tate Britain.