Sonatas, Rituals and Folksong

Sam Walton meets Nwando at Snape Malting’s during her February 2020 residency.

On a humdrum February Friday lunchtime, back when the world still felt relatively normal, the lone figure of Nwando Ebizie — multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and sometime DJ — is spotted sprinting across an otherwise deserted Snape Maltings car park, her hair wrapped in a towel. Hugging her long jacket around her to ward off the driving rain, head down and determined, she grins slightly as she runs, as if to acknowledge the strangeness of the scene: after all, beneath her coat, Ebizie is dressed only in swimwear, not on account of this afternoon’s torrential downpour but because of a “hammam” bathing ceremony that she is leading today as part of her week-long residency at Snape. She just had to pop out, from one Biblical shower to another, to get something from her car; now, it’s back to the ritual cleansing.