OPENING PREVIEW
12 June 2025
6pm - 8pm
Stuart Hall Library, iniva.

Dub Encyclopaedia is an immersive installation by artists Antonio José Guzman and Iva Jankovic, opening at the Stuart Hall Library on 13 June 2025 presented by the Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva).

Antonio Jose Guzman (b. 1971, Panama) and Iva Jankovic (b. 1979, Serbia) are Netherlands-based artists whose collaborative practice weaves together indigo-dyed textiles, sound, and performance to explore colonial legacies, migration, and diasporic identity. Drawing on diverse musical traditions, including dub and punk, their immersive installations and live works evoke the emotional resonance of displacement and cultural memory. Through patterned fabrics inspired by DNA sequencing and vernacular motifs, Guzman and Jankovic map global connections across the Black Atlantic, using indigo as a symbolic material to examine the transatlantic slave trade and the movement of people, knowledge, and ritual.

Drawing on the radical tradition of dub poetry, Dub Encyclopaedia maps diasporic journeys through textiles, sound, and archival traces. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a nomadic tent constructed from indigo ajrak fabrics and houses poems, books, soundscapes, and archival materials. Through this constellation of media, the artists explore storytelling, pedagogy, and resilience in the context of global migration and vernacular memory.

Presented as part of the Concrete Roots series for the Liverpool Biennial 2025, Dub Encyclopaedia marks the artists’ first solo presentation in the UK. Following a performance at the Biennial, two hand-crafted dresses featured in the live piece will travel to London, forming part of the exhibition narrative at iniva’s Stuart Hall Library.

All poems presented will enter the Stuart Hall Library collection, continuing the project’s life as part of iniva’s specialist archive of diasporic knowledge.

The project is accompanied by a public programme including a Participatory Performance on the 16 October at Stuart Hall Library. In September, online Reading Cycles will be available to the public online, led by iniva’s curator, alongside invited collaborators, drawing on the artists’ research to deepen engagement.

This project will leave a lasting imprint through its contributions to the Stuart Hall Library collection and its celebration of diasporic histories and cultures. Dub Encyclopaedia aligns with iniva’s mission to nurture, support and develop anti-racist and equitable spaces for artistic research, wellbeing, play, experimentation and joy with creative communities.

Dub Encyclopaedia is supported by the Elephant Trust, the Dutch Embassy, and the Panama Embassy.