What are you doing by my sea?

Recognised primarily for her vibrant paintings that interweave the ancestral and the present day with Luso-African histories and mythologies, What are you doing by my sea? is Cassi Namoda’s first site-specific, public artwork.

Born in 1988 in Maputo, Mozambique, and now based in Italy, Namoda has lived across Africa, Europe, America, and Asia. These varied experiences shape her nuanced depictions of coastal towns and urban life in post-colonial Mozambique.

Drawing on her background in film studies and a deep interest in storytelling, Namoda populates her works with characters from found images. Resembling cinematic stills, her compositions capture fleeting moments that hint at broader, untold narratives. The title of this window installation is drawn from a line spoken by the female protagonist in Hyenas (1992), a film by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty. The story centres around a former couple reimagined by Namoda on a Mozambican beach at sunset. Rather than illustrating the cinematic scene, Namoda transforms her memory of it into a new landscape that is rich with emotional tension, the complexities of place and a sense of both separation and return.

Influenced by art history, Mozambican literature and folklore, Namoda blends references across time and geography in this work—from JMW Turner’s seascapes and Margate’s renowned sunsets to Mia Couto’s magical realist fiction and artist-designed stained glass, particularly Henri Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire in the South of France. Conceived as a place of contemplation for visitors over the summer months, Namoda’s distinctive colour palette and the changing natural light from the window bridges the everyday and the spiritual.

This is the first Sunley Gallery Commission, Turner Contemporary’s new annual programme inviting artists each summer to engage with the gallery’s distinctive architecture and coastal setting.

View the window from outside the gallery; it will be illuminated in the evenings until 11pm.

Curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Senior Curator.

Cassi Namoda realised this project with designer Charles Dorrance-King.

Production is by Vinyline.