Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 1 September–14 November 2025

Space Black was founded with a hopeful vision for an alternative, imaginative, and innovative future. The studio is led by architectural designer and visual artist Rayan Elnayal and civil engineer and DJ Heba Tabidi. They are building an alternative practice model that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration to imagine spatial futures for marginalised communities rooted in justice and joy. The studio explores underrepresented and under-resourced ideas in the built environment through concept design and research, education, and cultural work.

Space Black

During their IASPIS residency, Space Black will develop drawings, models and concepts for an alternative music space that diverges from Eurocentric norms of where and how music and dance are experienced. They will interview musicians and cultural producers from the region to compare communities’ cultural relationships to music with current experiences in existing club spaces.

Heba Tabidi is a British-Sudanese civil engineer and DJ. Her industry experience ranges from complex computational structural analysis to high-level concept design. As a DJ and producer, she performs at venues and on the radio in London, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Accra. Her sound is experimental yet cohesive, blending techno and electronic music with jungle, breaks, and Sudanese drum rhythms in homage to the Black community’s contribution to the genre.

Rayan Elnayal is an artist, educator, and architectural designer. Alongside Space Black, she produces work that draws on her architectural background to speculate on fictional Sudanese spaces. Employing magic-realist techniques, she weaves futuristic narratives that resonate with Sudan, the SWANA region, and its diaspora.

Selected projects: Sense of Home (London/Accra, 2023); My Dream ‘Hoash’ Courtyard (London, 2023); Redesigning Red Path (London, 2024); Homeplace: Sound of Resistance (radio show, ongoing); Stadia: Sleeping Giants (2022); Something to Say (Windermere, 2022); Mapping Creative Spaces in Hackney (London, 2023); Ardagh Young Creatives Programme (London, 2023); Ambess Play Workshop (London, 2022); Hackney Quest Workshop (London, 2022); Homeplace: Protecting the Home (London, 2022); Space in the City (London, 2022).