Cassi Namoda is rethinking stained-glass windows at Turner Contemporary in Margate

Cassi Namoda paints figurative works drenched in bold blocks of colour. They pulse with heat, bringing everyday relationships together with fantastical symbolism. Many reflect upon the post-colonial landscape of Mozambique, combining Western mythologies with African indigenous religions. They also nod to pop and literary culture. For her first institutional work in the UK, Namoda has reimagined one of her paintings as a vinyl stained-glass window at Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK. Looking out over the beach, her languid installation fills the striking floor-to-ceiling window in the Turner’s Sunley Gallery.

‘Margate has such a specific quality. It’s like a portal to a dimension that feels very eccentric,’ she tells me, when we speak over Zoom halfway through the work’s installation. ‘Right now, I’m watching two jet skiers go through this cloudy sea. Some people are wearing heavy jackets and others are almost naked. It reminds me of a jazz song. It has this quirky beat quality and feels very existential.’ In planning the work, she has visited the British seaside town during three different seasons. She has also reflected upon Margate’s social divides and wanted to capture some of its contrasts.

Namoda describes the piece and the town like two magnets repelling. The title of the original painting, What Are You Doing by My Sea?, evokes a sense of conflict and ownership. ‘I felt this painting was interesting to implement because it’s not totally joyful,’ she says. ‘The title is like a rhetorical question; I’m thinking about a social and political context as well.’

The window shows an energetic flock of birds swooping through a yellow sky. A female protagonist stands to one side, looking away from the viewer out to sea. At the bottom of the frame, a male face, cut below the eyes by the composition, is suggestive of a severed head.

‘There’s this central disagreement in the work, but at the same time, it’s all coming from the heart,’ she says. ‘It seems the female figure has had some kind of heartbreak.’ While the original painting features a sunset, Namoda has left the sky in her window installation abstract, creating the feeling that the main character is ‘looking out into nothingness’. This also allows for the changing sun and seascape outside to impact the work.

In her research, Namoda has been inspired by other artist-designed stained-glass windows. She describes Henri Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire in the south of France as a site of ‘pilgrimage’ and is drawn more broadly to historical devotional paintings in France and Italy, where she is now based. ‘I think I have always made spiritual works with some symbolism that you would see in “religious” paintings,’ she says. ‘My early experience of painting was through the catholic architecture of the church with stories of crucifixion.’ Namoda engages with the darkness woven across religious imagery. She cites Flemish primitive painting and Pieter Bruegel, whose severed heads are reflected in her own sliced-through composition.

Namoda sees Matisse’s chapel as a peaceful place to ‘sit and reflect’, and she provides a similar experience at Turner Contemporary, with locally sourced pews for visitors inside the space. ‘I wanted to create a holy moment,’ she considers. ‘Something one could look at in amazement.’

When the gallery is closed at night, people on the beach can see the window illuminated. ‘I would say the most exciting part is evening viewing when the whole thing is lit up,’ says Namoda. ‘In the daytime, it’s soft and tender, and the sea is interacting through it. At nighttime you’re dealing directly with the image, which is quite powerful.’

Cassi Namoda's window is on view until 21 September 2025 at Turner Contemporary, Margate, turnercontemporary.org