Conversations | Visiting Artists Veronika Yadukha and Lethokuhle Msimang

Visiting artists: Veronika Yadukha and Lethokuhle Msimang | Artist talk/conversation: Friday, May 16, 5:30-6:30 PM Veronika Yadukha has been working in AVA’s Sculptural Studies Building to produce clay vessels for the exhibition Rantau, Black Family Visual Arts Center, Dartmouth College, April 9-18. The discussion will focus on how their collaboration uses transmedial translation to connect written and visual arts. Lethokuhle Msimang is a South African poet and co-author of the Rantau project. She translates Veronika Yadukha’s ceramic practice into poetry, while Veronika creates ceramic vessels inspired by Lethokuhle’s poems. Themes explore migration, liminality, and the fluidity of identity. The project weaves together poetry and pottery exploring the often hidden dimensions of pain and isolation experienced by those living in-between spaces. Lethokuhle’s poetry reflects the fragility of the black body and its unregistered precarity, while Veronika’s pots demonstrate a tactile embodiment of these concepts. The poems are not mere accompaniments but integral elements that guide the interpretation of the ceramic pieces, creating a dialogic relationship between word and form. Lethokuhle Msimang is a Poet and Writer born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. Graduated with a BA in Literary Studies and Creative Arts at the American University of Paris, completed an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. More recently, graduated with an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where she was honored with an Academic Achievement Award. Her work has been featured in several esteemed publications, including New Coin, New Contrast, Grocott’s Mail, Hanging Loose, The Paris Atlantic, Il Tolomeo, The Clamantis, and Stanzas (among others). The Frightened is her debut novella, published by Karavan Press. She presently works as a researcher at Dartmouth College.