This soft cover book is published by Dundee Contemporary Arts on the occasion of Toronto-based artist Sukaina Kubba’s first major solo exhibition in a UK institution. Both the exhibition and publication – the first dedicated to Kubba’s practice – are titled Turn Me Into a Flower.

The artist’s work is strongly rooted in material and cultural research, storytelling, and drawing connections. Her multidisciplinary practice spans the mediums of drawing, painting, printmaking, fibres, audio, video and installation, and explores narratives of cultural and material assimilation and appropriation. For the exhibition, she created a new body of work in DCA Print Studio through a production residency in January 2024, including screenprint, paper pulp casting, embossing and laser etching.

This publication brings together texts commissioned by Mercer Union and DCA for our respective exhibitions with Kubba in 2024. For Kubba’s year-long SPACE commission, Jealousy, she created three consecutive new works for Mercer Union’s billboard platform, two of which were subsequently shown in her exhibition at DCA. With the support of the British Council Scotland, Creative Scotland and the Québec Government Office in London, DCA has brought together five texts commissioned by both galleries into a single space. 

The publication includes a new poem by Glasgow-based poet and writer Daisy Lafarge, and an interview between Kubba and Montreal-based artist and curator Swapnaa Tamhane. These bookend three texts commissioned by Mercer Union to accompany Kubba’s billboard series, from Ami Xherro, Natascha Nanji and a second poem from Daisy Lafarge. It also contains a preface by DCA’s Head of Exhibitions, Tiffany Boyle, and full colour images of Kubba’s exhibition at DCA.