In conversation with YARA + DAVINA
“We were both passionate about making work accessible, playful and political, always rooting our work in site, context and audience.”
- YARA + DAVINA
YARA + DAVINA by Hugo Glendinning.
YARA + DAVINA make social practice artwork, creating ambitious public artworks that respond to site, context and audience. Unfailingly inventive, they use formats from within popular culture to make works which are accessible and playful. Using formats such as football, tea, to lollipop ladies, they root their works in the everyday, using a lightness of touch and humour to make works that are both poetic and universal.
As part of the upcoming Royal Docks Originals festival, YARA + DAVINA’s Arrivals + Departures art installation will explore birth, death and the journey in between. Taking the form of two large, interactive flip-dot display boards, like those at train stations, this installation invites the public to submit names of those who have arrived and departed, offering a space to acknowledge, celebrate and commemorate them. YARA + DAVINA will host welcome events and invite local artists for takeovers that respond to the festival theme, such as Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire by James King and Asif Shakoor.
Royal Docks Originals, a new free biennial festival from London’s Cultural Engine, takes place Monday 15th September - Saturday 4th October 2025.
How did the seed of your artistic collaboration take root in your shared experience and values?
We were friends who admired each other's practices for the values we embedded in our own approach to art making: creating moments of meaning making, of coming together, and making work outside of the capitalist art market, for and with the wider public. We were both passionate about making work accessible, playful and political, always rooting our work in site, context and audience. Our shared experience of becoming mothers at the same time, and living the challenges of making work while being present parents brought us together through the radical act of ‘job sharing’ as an artist duo.
How do you define “job-sharing art,” and how does that approach influence the projects you choose and how you structure them?
We define job sharing as truly sharing what we do, not only the hours but the highs and lows, the ideas, the networks, the risks and the responsibilities. Ultimately, this allows us to structure our projects around our time frames as working mothers, and the locations that are accessible to us individuals, so if Yara is closest to a project site, she takes the lead and vice versa with Davina.
Arrivals & Departures by YARA + DAVINA. Image credit Paolina Varbichkova.
What draws you to working in the public realm, and how do you navigate the challenges and opportunities it presents?
Working in the public realm gives us the opportunity to engage with a wider audience and respond to sites, contexts and diverse audiences in authentic ways. When possible, we make work with local residents so the art becomes relevant and meaningful to them. The challenges of making work like Arrivals + Departures is the risk in how the boards can be used to express varying political views and how we navigate that in a non-biased way.
Arrivals + Departures invites the public to share names of those arriving and departing—how do you see that act of contribution shaping the meaning of the work over time?
One of the things we love about placing work in a public context like this is it allows people to shape the meaning of the work. Essentially this allows the artwork to be made with and for the public, therefore becoming a truly public memorial where everyday people get to choose who is commemorated and celebrated. Over time, we will see how locals respond and engage with our work, and how the broader context of what is happening locally, nationally and internationally affects who gets to be named.
Arrivals & Departures by YARA + DAVINA. Image credit Paolina Varbichkova.
The work uses the visual language of transport boards but speaks about life, death, and migration—why was this everyday format important to you?
In all our work we subvert everyday objects or popular culture as a way to make the artwork accessible and playful. We want the work to feel like it almost fits into a location but then surprise people when they notice the details!
What does it feel like to give these boards a “permanent home” at the Royal Docks, amid themes of migration, [de]colonisation, and transformation?
It feels very poignant and timely for the boards to find a permanent home at the site of the Royal Docks. Within the current context of unrest around immigration and debates around decolonisation the reading of the work leans into the movement of people, both historically and currently.
Arrivals & Departures by YARA + DAVINA. Image credit Paolina Varbichkova.
The [Quick] #FLODown:
Best piece of creative advice you’ve ever received?
The most important creative act you can do is ask questions.
One work—book, song, or image—you keep returning to?
Sexy Semite, by Emily Jacir (2002)
A spot in London that always inspires you?
The South Bank Centre/Hayward Gallery
What’s one item you can’t make art without?
Laptop
In one word, how would you describe your practice right now?
Expansive
