Skip to main content
Information Experience Design (MA)

Adaiya Granberry

A light brown woman's chest covered in rice

Adaiya Granberry (b.1997, Tacoma, USA) is a Black and Filipino artist and researcher based in East London.

Her interdisciplinary approach explores possibility spaces for radical care and healing, re/learning and re/imagining.

She holds a BA with distinction from Duke University (2019) and is a current participant in the Museum Education Practicum with The Studio Museum in Harlem (2023).

In Fall 2023, she will begin an Alternative MA in Food and Art with the Gramounce and participate in three residencies with The Institute for Postnatural Studies (Madrid), Brave New Alps, La Foresta (Trentino, Italy), and Medialab Matadero (Madrid) between 2023-2024.

Degree Details

School of CommunicationInformation Experience Design (MA)RCA2023 at Battersea and Kensington

RCA Kensington, Darwin Building, Upper-ground floor

Wide shot of light brown woman with long braids and her hands on a white table; two plinths in front with props on them

Rooted in a Black feminist praxis, I am interested in the role of art – visual/material/sonic cultures – to aid in the ongoing process of healing and re/centering historical narratives from the edge space. I am curious about the malleability of history and how place can both reinforce and bifurcate collective memory.

My artistic practice holds on to a radical, slow ethic of care as its conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. It is within this context I seek to grapple with violent legacies and contemporary perpetuations of settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy.

Working across moving image, sound, photography, and installation, I aim to embark on a collaborative journey of discovery, re/learning what and how we know the world and our past to inform how we re/imagine our future. My current research delves into the social, political, ecological, and relational dimensions of food as a conduit for repairing our connection with the land and planet Earth.

image of trees with a white sheet in front of them
hands holding rice with water dripping
hands scooping from a huge pile of rice
Stills from Ancestral Rice Magic (2023)
image of tree with sunrise lighting
We do not simply ingest our environment. We dance to it, dance with it, sing to it, caress it; we are in awe of it, and respectful towards it. Eating is not just ingestion. Eating is the occasion for the rites and rituals of our lives. Eating is praxis in social amenities. Eating is language that speaks of the nuances of what we are. Eating is making alive the various and variegated conjugations of our lives.
- Edilberto N. Alegre in Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food (1988)

This work takes the spiritual connectedness and traditional ritual practices with rice from pre-colonial Philippines as a point of departure. Ancestral Rice Magic situates food as a site for (dis)alienation and this history as a framework for being with the world. This work is a provocation for re/imagining our relationship with food, the land, and the planet.

Assistant Camera Operator: Lyllah Ledesma

Special thanks to: RCA Technician Lewin St. Cyr and the On8mil Team

Medium:

single-channel video, 16mm film transferred to digital

Size:

3 minutes
16mmdecolonisingepistemologyfilipinofood-cultureshistorymoving-imagenatureritual
CRT monitor on a small mountain of rice. Screen showing title of video with hands holding rice
Installation test

This installation for the RCA 2023 Degree Show creates a container space for encounter and reciprocity. Using materials indigenous to the Philippines and a soundscape formed from fermenting rice, the materials act as active collaborators in the work. We invite people in to slow down, sit, and breathe.

This work offers a vessel for thinking-feeling practice - space for embodiment of an idea and convening alternative ways of knowing and understanding food.

Final installation images to be shared on my personal website.

Special thanks to RCA Technicians: Roddy Canas, Mike Atherton, and Fred Thomson

Medium:

Multimedia installation / rice, rice glue, bamboo cane, rattan cane webbing, abaca fiber, mild steel, and plywood

Size:

2m x 2m x 4m
embodimentfilipinoimmersive-experienceinstallationmaterialityslownesssoundscapespace-timevibrant-matter
Image of a body of water
Image of ocean waves
waves
Stills from On Sonic Violence Below (2023)
Image of ocean waves

A sonic narrative examining the issue of noise pollution through the lens of non-humans underwater. On Sonic Violence Below draws on theory from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Donna Haraway, Pauline Oliveros, and Astrid Neimanis and seeks to use acoustic ecology to open up emergent possibilities for interspecies intimacy and care.

Using hydrophone recordings from in and around London, audiences are immersed in an underwater soundscape which gestures at our intimate entanglements with more-than-human life.

Field recordings in collaboration with: Yeonju Sun and Katherine Ogden-Newton

Special thanks to RCA Technicians: Joe Hirst and Kyle Ramsey

black background with cropped 35mm images of body parts (eyes, ears, mouths, noses)

In collaboration with: Nathanael Amadou Kliebhan and Eddie Ade Akin 

An audiovisual experience presented during the 2023 IRCAM Forum Workshops in Paris at the Centre Pompidou.

(Re)negotiating Space explores the dynamic qualities of sound to transcend cultural boundaries and colonial borders. Throughout history, Black people have created new modes of communication, evading while simultaneously being shaped by our shared histories of colonization and exploitation. This project aims to put the sonic consequences of this history in conversation – appreciating moments of both harmony and dissonance to highlight our trajectories of radical assemblage and resilience.

What are the sociocultural implications of sound? How can sound be employed in the movement towards collective liberation? What are the possibilities for a Black sonic lingua franca? Bridging a myriad of fragmented sounds, voices, and visuals, (re)negotiating space is a disembodied representation of the vibrant sonic nuances of the Black diaspora.

Special thanks to RCA Tutor: Matt Lewis

Previous StudentNext Student

Social

About

Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU