Maddy Wilson in conversation with the artist duo @publickknowledge , Fatima Butt and Maya Campbell Todd on their community centred art workshops that deal with sharing cultures, consumption and licking.
Full article out tomorrow.
Hello! We are Fatima and Maya, two MFA candidates currently at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Butt’s research examines the colonization of the subcontinent’s soil through consumption, decay, and reclamation. Working with henna, potatoes, and turmeric, she draws on their domestic, agricultural, and trade histories. Moving away from academic hierarchies, she turns to recipes, conversations, and diasporic memory as sites of knowledge, questioning what it means to co-exist with growth and rot.
Todd’s practice spans image, material and text; exploring the body as a porous, affective site where memory and emotion circulate. She focuses on crying and weeping as moments when inner states become external, blurring boundaries between self and world. Todd treats tears not as symbols but as active, embodied matter - leaking, staining, crystallising, evaporating and leaving traces while remaining in flux. Her work attends to these subtle residues of affect, often in domestic spaces, where emotions settle into surfaces almost imperceptibly. Across her practice, she asks how affect can be made visible without becoming fixed. By focusing on these lingering substances, she explores how bodies and materials remain entangled within historical power structures, and how weeping can be understood not just as loss, but as a connective process across time.
Publick Knowledge is a collaborative project using food as both material and method. Through shared cooking and eating, we explore flavour as memory, labour and inheritance.
Each gathering is collective, unfolding as a living archive shaped by those present. Originally hailing from Pakistan and Ireland respectively, we are interested in how food systems can transcend borders and bring communities together. We look forward to welcoming you to our table!
Public Knowledge is a community-centred cooking and eating research group by Fatima Butt and Maya Todd. Through shared workshops, we approach food as material - thinking through consumption, decay, labour and inheritance. What remains is not waste, but trace: of flavour, memory and connection, where what is taken in and what is left behind are held together.
Introducing Maya Todd | MFA Cohort 2026
@mayatoddstudio
Maya Todd (b. 2000, Belfast) is an MFA candidate based at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her practice moves across image, materiality and text, exploring the body as a porous and affective site through which both memory and emotion circulate. She is particularly interested in acts of crying and weeping, in which tears express both bodily phenomena and cultural inscriptions. These moments are largely defined as through which interior states become external and the boundary between self and world begins to shift.
Todd approaches tears not as symbols but as an embodied and active matter. They leak / stain / crystallise / evaporate / leaving behind subtle traces while also participating in ongoing transformation. Her work attends to these residues of affect, often within domestic space, where emotional life settles into surfaces almost imperceptibly. Textiles, paper, hair, skin and food waste alongside other intimate structures become sites where acts of weeping are absorbed or held in suspension.
Across her work, Todd returns to the question of how affect might be made visible without becoming static and stabilised.Through this attention towards lingering substances, her practice considers how bodies and materials remain entangled within historical power structures and how acts of weeping might be understood not only as expressions of loss, but as processes that connect across time.
Based at Wadham College, she is a beneficiary of an Erna Plachte Scholarship and, along with her collaborator Fatima Butt, is a recipient of the Ruskin Research Fund for their ongoing project public(k) knowledge.
Honoured to be part of InterWOVEN at @downartscentre1
This exhibition is a celebration of the threads that connect us, whether through material, memory or place.
I’m delighted to share some new works alongside the inspiring practices of @ruthosborne_art@niamhnicathain@malu_colorin@katerina_gribkoff
Grateful to @linenaliveni for supporting projects that keep these stories and connections alive!
‘Let the Light in’ is now on show at the 195th RHA Summer Exhibition!
It’s so overwhelming to be showing work alongside such phenomenal Irish artists (especially @colin_davidson_artist who conferred my degree from @belfastschoolofart@ulsteruni in 2023!)
On Varnishing Day I was greeted with a little red dot and the surreal news that my piece had been sold! I will be starting my MFA in October at the University of Oxford so the proceeds of the sale will help fund my further study and development as an artist. Thank you to whoever purchased my work and thanks one again to the entire team at the Royal Hibernian Academy for the opportunity and support.
Find my work on show upstairs in the Petronella Brown Gallery.
:)
In Praise of Shadows is still ongoing in the Sunbeam Gallery at Ards Art Centre.
Shadows are fleeting. They are cast and recast with the shifting of light. Both tethered to the physical world and yet evoke a sense of intangibility. My work In Praise of Shadows explores this duality - the way shadows are shaped by the objects around us. They exist at the threshold of presence and absence, continually shifting with the light.
Fleeting yet evocative.
I explore the interplay between light and shadow ... flatness and form ... the transience impressions of passing time.
Shadows, while intangible, bear the weight of memory and form enabling then to become vessels for contemplation.
This body of work invites viewers to linger in the spaces between. It asks us to consider how absence can evoke presence and how light transforms what we see, feel and remember. I hope it acts as a reflection on the intangible and on how we find meaning in what we cannot touch.
@cultureardsandnorthdown@flaxartstudios@artscouncilni
I am deeply grateful to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for awarding me a SIAP award. This incredible financial support will allow me to embark on an exciting new journey, developing a body of research, writing and artwork focused on 3-dimensional sculptural forms inspired by the intricate structures found within torchon lace. This opportunity means so much to me, and I’m truly thankful for the Arts Council’s dedication to supporting artists and creativity across Northern Ireland.
I’m looking forward to sharing more of this work as it evolves and to exploring the possibilities that lie ahead.
Thanks also to @flaxartstudios for providing me with the space to develop my practice as part of the emerging artist programme.
#acnisupported #nationallottery #thankstoyou @lottogoodcauses@artscouncilni
My first ever solo show, ‘In Praise of Shadows’ opens this Thursday from 7pm-9pm in the Sunburst Gallery at Ards Arts Centre!
I am exhibiting alongside the fantastic Tim Millen whose show, ‘Nether’ will be shown downstairs in the Georgian Gallery.
Everyone is welcome to the opening reception to enjoy a glass of wine and browse some new art work by two local artists.
@cultureardsandnorthdown@visitardsandnorthdown@timmillen_@flaxartstudios@qssartstudios@visualartistsireland
