Image: Santiago Mostyn, *Dream One*, Södertälje Konsthall. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

Commissioned by Primary, Santiago Mostyn, a Stockholm-based artist, will present his first solo project in the UK, Natural History (Radio Free Grenada).

He spent over a year researching across Europe, North America and the Caribbean, and then three weeks in Studio A4 developing this digital commission. Before his research took a turn midway through the process, his project was previously titled The Final Letters of Jackie Creft. The hope was to bring forward the legacy of the Grenada Revolution (1979–1983) as a template for imagining how radical forms of pedagogy and political self-determination can manifest in present-day Britain. The research and output of Natural History (Radio Free Grenada) will continue to engage with a process of ‘emotional memory’, revisiting the lives of underrepresented figures in the history of Black radicalism to plot a path forward.

Santiago is a British citizen who grew up in postcolonial contexts on both sides of the Black Atlantic—Africa and the Caribbean—and experienced the British school system from beginning to end. Even more importantly, his displacement from Grenada as a child during the US military invasion was a foundational trauma. During the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983, Santiago’s parents lived on the island, teaching in a primary school and working for Radio Free Grenada. His unique perspective, marked by both distance from and deep immersion in the discussion surrounding British identity in the visual arts, has informed his work. This commission represents the culmination of a lifetime spent developing an artistic language centred on themes of belonging and identity.

Digital Commission

The digital commission will now focus on the first aspect of the Natural History project: the auditory archives of Revolutionary Grenada. During the summer 2025 physical residency at Primary, audio materials were collected from a wide range of sources and shared during a live listening session. The session was reperformed for NTS Radio and as part of Serpentine Galleries’ live programme, Peter Doig, House of Music: Sound Service.

This unique archive of songs, interviews and field recordings from the 1979–1983 period in Grenada is being developed into an interactive online repository, in collaboration with a web designer who focuses on postcolonial history in the digital sphere.

Photographs made by the US military during the invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) will also be included in a recontextualised format. Generative image-to-video tools utilising AI will be applied to the still photographs of soldiers interacting with local Grenadians, and the soldiers, figures of power both in image and reality, will be made to collapse or be physically compromised in the artificially created videos.

Natural History (Radio Free Grenada) is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Santiago Mostyn works with films, installations, and performances to reflect on the cultural exchange and interconnectedness between African diasporic communities across continents. By intertwining a wide range of imagery from the artist’s personal archives with footage of historical events, public figures, and racial injustice, Mostyn’s practice focuses on creating multilayered narratives that explore new interpretations of a place, both culturally and psychologically. His works also explore how personal memories relate to broad histories.

Mostyn received his Bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his Master’s degree from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Mostyn’s recent solo exhibitions took place at Mariakirken (Copenhagen, 2023), Gerðarsafn Museum (Kópavogur, 2022), House of Sweden (Washington D.C., 2022), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2021), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, 2020), and Institute Suédois (Paris, 2019). He co-curated The Moderna Exhibition 2018: With the Future Behind us at Moderna Museet (Stockholm, 2018) and exhibited at Buffalo AKG Art Museum (Buffalo, 2024), Gyeongnam Art Museum & Space Heem (Busan, 2023), Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane, 2023), Kalmar Konstmuseum (Kalmar, 2023), Malmö Art Museum (Malmö, 2022), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2021), Art Hub Copenhagen (Copenhagen, 2021), the Luleå Biennial (Arjeplog, 2020), Nida Art Center (Nida, 2020), and the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga, 2019), among others. Mostyn was a resident at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2022 and was the 2024-25 David and Roberta Logie Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Mostyn, in collaboration with Susanna Marcus Jablonski, is currently creating Malmö’s official anti-racist monument, titled Master Narratives, which will be permanently installed in Jesusparken (Falsterboplan) in 2026. The project began as a citizens’ initiative in 2019 by local activists to honour victims of the racist serial killer Peter Mangs, who committed shootings in Malmö between 2003 and 2010.

Mostyn currently lives and works in Stockholm.

Past Events