Katie Numi Usher Mentorship Awards recipient

Katie Numi Usher is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belize. Katie works across performance, sculpture, painting and embroidery, and her practice explores Blackness and interrogates Black female erasure within both the colonial history of Belize and the present day. She is particularly interested in the lack of visibility of Black women within art history and uses her work to challenge the cultural institutions of Belize to address this imbalance. Katie regularly utilises online social media platforms as virtual galleries, challenging the gatekeeping of traditional museum and gallery spaces and providing a space and a platform for other Belizean creatives to connect with both their community and the wider Black diaspora. 

Born out of a 2022 artist residency at Gaswork, the “Eating Sugar in Front of Henry Tate” performance series emerged and continues while the Government of Belize navigates local sugar prices and the relations between sugarcane farmers.