School of Thought
Purification by Courtney Brooke from Wild Alchemy Journal, Fire Edition
Art and Spirituality
Based on the curatorial practice of Cindy Sissokho, this talk explores the intersections between contemporary art and spirituality approached through anticolonial, social, and political perspectives.
Grounded in her collaborations with artists across transnational contexts – particularly within Africa and diasporas – the talk will open a space to reflect on how spiritual forms and embodied knowledge are embedded, indirectly evoked, or circulate within contemporary artistic practices. These may take the form of ancestral references, gestures, landscapes, amongst others, resiting categories but remaining central to their creation. Drawing on selected curatorial projects, the talk will explore how curatorial work can create the conditions to hold space for these often intangible dimensions connecting to spirituality in art.
Cindy Sissokho
(b. 1992, France) is an independent curator, cultural producer, art consultant, and writer whose practice focuses on anticolonial, social and political perspectives in contemporary art and culture. Her curatorial work is nurtured by the urgency to broaden and disseminate knowledge and artistic production from systemically racialised and marginalised perspectives. Her practice takes shape across multiple formats, including curating multidisciplinary research residencies, small to large-scale exhibitions, critical writing, mentoring, lecturing, panel talks, and other forms of public engagement.
She is currently working on two long-term projects. The first is a collective digital glossary ofnon-terms for the Institution(ing)s project directed by Luísa Santos across Europe, opening up conversations around living knowledges, collective memory, and institutions. The second is Atlantic Threads, an artistic and cultural programme initiated by the Brazilian organisation Pivô, where she works as Curator. This project fosters connections between Brazil, Europe and West Africa.
Deeply committed to curatorial and artistic development, as well as consultancy, she regularly collaborates with artists, curators, and institutions over short to long term projects. Her consultancy work spans mentoring, portfolio reviews, juries and selection panels, art school’s curriculum review, and more.
Art and Spirituality
19th of May 2026
10:30 AM
Location: ESAD Caldas da Rainha
Myth and Magic Making: Art as a Sacred Act
explores how myth, ritual, and alchemical thinking continue to shape contemporary artistic practice. Artist Jemma Foster reframes magic not as belief or spectacle, but as a critical, relational methodology for sensing uncertainty, material intelligence, and ecological entanglement.
Wild Alchemy Lab is a creative consultancy and mixed-media publishing studio, founded by Jemma, exploring human and more-than-human imagination at the intersection of art and technology. The talk will be accompanied by a screening of short films and immersive soundscapes from the WAL collective – including Bones Tan Jones, Kyriaki Goni and Miriam Simun – that blend documentary, speculative fiction, and ritual performance, posing poetic inquiries into the role of technology and magic in re-enchanting ecological consciousness and ancestral intelligence.
Still from Firebird, featuring Bones Tan Jones
Jemma Foster
is an inter-disciplinary artist, writer and creative director. Her work researches human and more-than-human consciousness and imagination at the intersection of art and technology. Rooted in a background in plant and vibrational medicine, her practice draws from alchemy, geomancy and social dreaming to create biotherapeutic soundscapes, immersive installations and guided rituals for interspecies communication. Her work has been exhibited and performed at galleries and institutions worldwide including Somerset House, The Barbican, ICA London, Ars Electronica, and the UN Conference of Parties.
Jemma is the founder and director of creative consultancy and mixed-media publishing studio Wild Alchemy Lab, and half of the artist duo Semantica, which was awarded the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art at Ars Electronica 2023. She is the author of Sacred Geometry (Octopus, 2020), Wild Alchemy Lab: An Astro-botanical Remedy Deck (Laurence King, 2023), Wild Alchemy: An Astro-Botanical Guide to the Magic, Myth and Medicine of Plants (Laurence King, 2024).
Myth and Magic Making: Art as a Sacred Act
Talk + Film Screening
21st of April 2026
14:30
ESAD | 1.5 hrs (Opening ritual, talk, film screening, Q&A, closing ritual)
Location: ESAD Caldas da Rainha
Still from Firebird, featuring Bones Tan Jones