artists
We work with extraordinary artists, empowering them to create exceptional work and drive social change through creativity and solidarity.
We embark on collaborative journeys with artists, fostering new connections and creating opportunities for their growth and development. This includes collaborations and residencies with local and international partners, as well as residencies based in our studios in Newcastle.
From our studios, we connect artists with a diverse network of partners, collaborators and allies, creating opportunities to expand thinking, share expertise and spark new ideas. You can read more about our artist-centred approach to residencies here.
Artists are encouraged to develop their ideas through research, experimentation and dialogue, with the freedom to embrace the unexpected, adapt to new discoveries and work at their own pace. We describe this approach as research as practice.
We are committed to building meaningful, long-term relationships with artists, often working together over many months and, in some cases, years. By prioritising the development of ideas and artistic practice over short-term engagement, we create the conditions for deeper exploration and lasting impact.
Our work with artists spans more than 30 years. You can explore this history in our Artists Archive.
We embark on collaborative journeys with artists, fostering new connections and creating opportunities for their growth and development. This includes collaborations and residencies with local and international partners, as well as residencies based in our studios in Newcastle.
From our studios, we connect artists with a diverse network of partners, collaborators and allies, creating opportunities to expand thinking, share expertise and spark new ideas. You can read more about our artist-centred approach to residencies here.
Artists are encouraged to develop their ideas through research, experimentation and dialogue, with the freedom to embrace the unexpected, adapt to new discoveries and work at their own pace. We describe this approach as research as practice.
We are committed to building meaningful, long-term relationships with artists, often working together over many months and, in some cases, years. By prioritising the development of ideas and artistic practice over short-term engagement, we create the conditions for deeper exploration and lasting impact.
Our work with artists spans more than 30 years. You can explore this history in our Artists Archive.
Artists in focus |
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Ziza is a multidisciplinary artist of Rwandan heritage based in the North East of England, engaging with mediums of performance and installation to challenge preconceived ideologies about identity, power and blackness. They are one of the UK-based artists selected for Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues.
Free to Roam is their ambitious multidisciplinary project developed through their Contested Desires residencies at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Museo Egzio in Italy and D6. Their project critically examines Western knowledge systems - including religion, art history and scientific inquiry - and how power is upheld across these frameworks. Ziza presented new work in the Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock (2025) and The Late Shows 2025 and 2026. They initiated an event in collaboration with Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (GIFT), D6 and Mwenza Blell (an academic researcher, writer, artist and community organiser), bringing their research to new audiences. Ziza is a D6 Associate Artist. |
Lucy is a multimedia artist and curator whose practice spans film, painting and installation. She is also the co-founder of NVAIR, an arts and educational space in Ternopil, Ukraine. In 2019 she joined D6 for a research residency, returning in 2022 following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As an artist and curator in residence, she held a curatorial role in (Re)Grounding (2022-2025), a UK-Ukraine-Cyprus residency programme with IZOLYATSIA (Ukraine), exploring the social, political and environmental injustices of the climate crisis. Her two solo exhibitions, entitled Systems of Defence and Birds, reflect on the universal condition of her homeland and community, profoundly impacted by the ongoing war. She is committed to supporting artists who are externally and internally displaced through curation, mentoring and the development of networks, including collaboration with Ukrainian cultural professionals in the North East via the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Lucy also has an ongoing role as a D6 Associate Artist and is a partner with Congress of Cultural Activists in ASSEMBLE. |
Current artists
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Elisabeth’s artistic practice is driven by a desire to map stories, bodies and mythologies, and to examine the visibility (or lack of) and curation of Black and African histories. During her Contested Desires residencies in the North East, she mapped interconnecting stories of Black and African people who visited Newcastle during an era of empire and abolition, including abolitionists and performers in the North East Coast Exhibition and touring Newcastle’s theatres and music halls.
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Based in the UK, and originally from Iran, Roya is an interdisciplinary artist, working across mixed media including ceramics, storytelling, drawing, photography, print, and digital art. Her work explores human experience, memory, the environment, wellbeing, and connection through material and conversational forms. She has been selected for the ASSEMBLE Fellowship.
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Rafael is a visual artist and documentary filmmaker, exploring the dynamic relationship between human beings and their environment. During his Contested Desires residencies, Rafael has been working with young people in Rome, Santiago and Newcastle to explore the contradictory nature of explorers. During workshops Rafael used the artefacts in Museo delle Civiltà as a starting point. He asked the young people to create drawings from different perspectives: how the objects might be used in their places of origin, what type of person an explorer might be, and the journeys they took. Rafael exhibited the ensuing work in the Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock.
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Maria’s live art, performance and text works draw on anthropologies, mythologies and uncertain futures to expand and erode historical references. For Contested Desires Maria is developing a new body of work entitled Waiting Wars, a series of performative interventions that reflect on liturgies of waiting for wars. The work started as a site-specific response to the Unesco Heritage site of Fort bij Vijfhuizen in the Netherlands. Developed in its first two chapters through traditional chants, spoken poems and dance movements, the third chapter, presented at Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock, looked at body-postures of power in soldiers and the tarantella - a traditional dance from Calabria.
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Amak is one of the artists who took part in our project Artists Connecting in Transition, which connects artists whose practice has been disrupted by forced migration. During this she developed her project Dreams, which was selected for the digital exhibition Belonging. Amak took part in our ASSEMBLE dialogues, which inspired an ongoing collaborative practice with artist Paria Goodarzi leading to performances in Glasgow and in Newcastle for International Human Rights Day. She was a D6 Associate Artist (2023-25).
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Contested Desires artist Andreas explores ideas of vulnerability and care in the context of the impact of British imperialism on the lives of queer people around the world, asking: ‘How possible is it to decolonise each molecule of institutional perception around our individuality?’ He took part in a residency at D6 gaining inspiration from queer gardening collective, TopSoil. He exhibited his ensuing work in the Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock.
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Paul Nataraj |
isaac nana opoku - AFROSCOPE |
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Paul works with sound, text and recorded archive materials to explore the relationships between memory and sound, with a focus on stories of migration, diaspora and postcolonial identity. Based in the North of England, he joined D6 as one of the UK artists participating in Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues. Through the programme, he has had residencies at Pro Progressione in Hungary and the National Museum of Science and Natural History in Portugal. Across 2025 and 2026, Paul began co-producing a new body of work with Sangini, a black and minorities women led community arts organisation based in South Shields. Paul has presented new work in the Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock (2025) and The Late Shows 2026. He participated in conferences and talks with D6, including the prestigious CHASE Lecture at Northumbria University.
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AFROSCOPE is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Tema, Ghana, who represented Ghana for the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. Their practice aims to ‘decolonise imagination’ by investigating alternative ways of being and challenging established paradigms. They are taking part in Contested Desires, with residencies in Cyprus, Italy and the UK. Influenced by weaving and indigenously produced fabrics, Nana is exploring the impact of colonial heritage on contemporary artisanal culture and textile production. In response to the erasure of indigenous textile practices through colonisation, they created a multidimensional textile piece that serves as both artefact and archive - a tactile manifestation of memory reclamation and cultural restoration exhibited in the Contested Desires group exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock. In dialogue with the textile, Nana compiled a digital archive of the many objects they encountered during their residency at the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome.
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