Moving between archival research, personal identification and artistic practice, Mangalanayagam investigates the complex and often contradictory position of the “free Black woman”. Drawing on Blank Pages, an exhibition at Bildmuseet, she explores letter writing as a way of engaging with historical fragments, imagining alternative narratives and questioning what the archive allows us to know.
The lecture offers an introduction to artistic research as a process of questioning, making and negotiating uncertainty. What can art make room for when archives remain silent, conceal or leave gaps? And how might artistic practice become a space for testing contradictions rather than resolving them?
Nina Mangalanayagam is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research and artistic practice explore hybridity, colonial legacies, and belonging through photography and moving image.
Her current research spans two distinct projects. In collaboration with Louise Wolthers at the Hasselblad Foundation, she is developing Botanics and Symbiosis – Expanding Photography, which builds on their earlier joint research project, Photography and the Glitch. This previous collaboration resulted in the exhibition and publication Bugs and Metamorphosis – Glitching Photography (2025).
Alongside this collaborative work, Mangalanayagam is completing Colouring-in Sweden, exploring how artistic practice can engage with the gaps, silences and contradictions of colonial archives.
