Sumayya Vally

Sumayya is the Founder and Principal of Counterspace. Her design, research and pedagogical practice is committed to finding expression for hybrid identities and contested territories. She also founded Counterparts, an arm of Counterspace – an interdisciplinary space, residency, dialogue and publishing platform, with an interest in tracing, seeding and carving collaborative ways of working.

Vally is in love with Johannesburg. It serves as her laboratory for finding speculative histories, futures, archaeologies, and design languages, with the intent to reveal the invisible. Her work is often forensic, and draws on performance, the supernatural, the wayward and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. She is presently based between Johannesburg and London as the lead designer for the Serpentine Pavilion 2020/20 Plus 1.

“COVID-19 has brought the Serpentine Pavilion themes of community and gathering sharply into focus,” she says. At and& Leuven, learn more about the places, spaces and artefacts which have made care and sustenance part of London’s identity.