Divine Southgate-Smith is a Togolese-British transdisciplinary artist and poet based in London.
Her practice explores archival poetics and material memory, reimagining how we record and relate to time. Drawing on Black Indigenous perspectives, she treats the archive as an active, speculative space – one that generates Afro-diasporic counter-memories and future imaginaries.
Her work moves between storytelling and historical reworking, engaging with non-linear temporalities and the impact of institutional archives on the Black imaginary. Recent projects include her 2025 solo exhibition NAVIGATOR at NiCOLETTi and the ongoing A Grammar of the Void with Manchester Museum. Divine’s work is held in the Sainsbury Centre collection, and she is a recipient of the Mosaic Art Award and the East Gallery Fellowship.
Divine was recently appointed Founding Director of DOKUZA Council: an Arts and Sciences Residency Program, opening in 2028 in Turkey.