- Recording date: 6 May 2025
- Interviewees: Catherine Hahn
- Podcast duration: 51min 06sec
Introduction
Catherine Hahn brings her specialism in art, museums and space towards decolonising the weight of the space of the cathedral. She explores how space links to community, through different interventions and speculative ways of imagining what else could be instituted, especially with art. Masculinities and the art of the future are revisited and re-figured here. The speed of re-birth, experimentation, modernism and manufacture in the postwar energy of designing the cathedral and the planning of the city is situated. Catherine discusses how fragility can present the notion of ‘breathing cathedrals’ as moments for reconfiguring change. Catherine underlines how big spaces have big voices, which can take risks.
Catherine brings in two different modernist artists, Eva Frankfurther, who sketched labouring bodies and portraits with women and multicultural figures, taking us to what is behind the scenes in making spaces, as well as the colourist, Aubrey Williams (1926-1990), who created 30 paintings in response to Shostakovich’s music, providing a kinaesthesia of feeling music and colour, which could powerfully layer the cathedral. The discussion takes us towards denting narratives of erasure with interventions – such as Noise of the Past – alongside call-and-response elements in re-shaping places. The steps of the cathedral are appreciated as a threshold with scope for planetary solidarities, a site from where different protest mobilisations regularly gather to sound out change.
The constant discomfort of reconciliation, reparation and representation presents challenges which move between Catherine’s research in South Africa and the UK. Linking us also back to the local, with reference to The Pan-African Connection art exhibition (1983) at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, as well as the figurative work of both Claudette Johnson and Barbara Walker, to consider how intervention is received as well as resisted.
See the artist map drawn by Catherine Hahn accompanying this podcast.
Biography
Dr. Catherine Hahn is an artist and social researcher who is a member of the Migrant Futures Institute at Goldsmiths University. She uses creative research to identify obstacles to equality and to claim more equitable, life-affirming practices. She has lectured extensively, including in Art History at the University of Kent and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths. She was recently the Administrator of Studio 3 Gallery at Kent and a researcher with the Global Gender and Cultures of Equality project (GlobalGRACE) at Goldsmiths. A key aspect of her methodology is drawing and mapping. She is currently researching the diverse, working-class queer history of South London and is co-producing an exhibition with input from members of Meet Me at the Albany and the LGBTQ+ Community Centre, Southwark (2025). The exhibition dovetails with research on local migration and leather. Catherine’s creative approach to history retrieval will challenge and change perceptions of South London heritage, including the local impact of migrants and colonialism. The innovative approach will resource future research collaborations with local archives, community centres and individuals.
Her publications include:
‘British History at Tate Britain post-Brexit: Rich, white men and space invaders’ (2025) European Journal of Cultural Studies; 'How to Do Social Research with Drawing’ (2024: 99-110) In How to Do Social Research With...; ‘Reclaiming History in the British Museum Entranceway: Imperialism, Patronage and Female, Queer and Black Legacies’ Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, Taylor & Francis. She is currently co-authoring a book with Nirmal Puwar and Siobhan McGuirk, Outsider Insiders: gender agendas and race in museums in the UK and South Africa (MUP).
Podcast
Transcript
NIRMAL PUWAR: So, today's guest is Dr Catherine Hahn, travelling from London for our Hear Here podcast. Catherine has published widely on decolonising museums, art histories, space, housing, and has an extensive body of publications that readers can look up on the web. Today, she's bringing her expertise in the whole area of sociology, visual sociology, art history, and alternative tours of a space. In fact, Catherine has created one for the British Museum, if listeners want to tune into that.
So, Catherine, we really appreciate your visits here. You've made quite a few visits over time. You've called on your extensive knowledge to think with the space and beyond the space of Coventry Cathedral [distant echo of voices in background].
CATHERINE HAHN: Yes, I think one of the things that really struck me as someone who's not got much connection here is just the weight, particularly of its early years, of this space. I'm very interested in this from an art, visual sociology, and museum perspective—as a practitioner in that area—and particularly in how it connects to community, rather than necessarily to its religiosity. I guess it would be fair to say.
When we talked before about the space, it really inspired me to start thinking about these kinds of quick connections. I made a sketch that's on the website if people want to look at it while we're talking, but that also will, I hope, link to and feed into the conversation.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Thank you for doing that. That sketch is amazing. It's an incredible visual register or hook into various aspects of our conversation. You mentioned community. We've just heard a group of primary school children walking through the nave where we're sitting. We're sitting in front of Graham Sutherland's tapestry, amongst the organ in the space of the altar.
So, my first question for you, Catherine, is given that you engage with art, space and community, and much of your research is focused on museums, as well as the infrastructure, and how it impedes and enables and changes over time, it would be great if you could outline how you are intending to discuss your presence in the Cathedral today and your response to the Cathedral with your interests and background.
CATHERINE HAHN: The way I'm thinking about it today is, first of all, as a space that has its integral artworks, and what that means is a kind of fixity in terms of what we can or cannot do with the space today. Then, look at some possibilities within the space, particularly the mobile elements, and the different interventions or engagements across time in the space. Also, I think of spaces speculatively, that is, often with the inspiration of what else could be. So, these are the possibilities for me here in terms of art and what that might bring to us to think differently about space and community.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It would be interesting to hear about the issues and the restrictions you mentioned and how you approach them in the Cathedral's design and its impact, as well as the spaces’ capacity to change, including implications for the very rapid ways it was actually constructed. It would be great too, if you could pinpoint any particular aspects in this space, which come to your mind when we're thinking of those histories and their particularities.
[distant voice echoing in the background]
[00:03:41]
CATHERINE HAHN: Lovely. Obviously, you know the history, but for me it was kind of new seeing it and then reading about it. So, maybe if I just begin by giving an idea of what I think was happening and then maybe what these restrictions are.
So, one of the things about the Cathedral is, as you say, the speed at which it went up. The old Cathedral was destroyed during World War II. Then, there was a competition, and in 1950, Basil Spence won that and literally 12 years later— from conception to making—in 1962, we have the space open.
We have these kinds of frameworks and these phrases —modernism, this idea that it's a phoenix rising from the ashes, which again, sort of evokes a kind of rebirth and rejuvenation. The notion of experimentation and innovation was also tied to the rapid expansion of the city. So, we had this boom in the city, the car industry and this idea of hope and optimism post-war.
So, you have this kind of moment in British history which, we might say, very quickly disappears, especially as more critical evaluation and engagement emerge, along with an acknowledgement that things aren't all about this strong, post-war masculine energy. However, we have this very strong, positive energy, I would say, that drives the desire to have Basil Spence design his Cathedral. I use that term "his" because even today, when I came in the front door, there's a big sign that tells us about his vision, and so, it's not necessarily only a place of God; it's also this place of the designer, his great design and manufacture of it.
When we think of speed, we also consider the concrete used to build it. It's also literally concretised, physically, a kind of entombed space. Then, these artworks that are not artworks, per se, but are embedded and instituted in the walls. They're also very much part of the framework. We have this huge—I think it's 23 meters, is that right? —tapestry to absorb the sound, so it performs this function, as well as a backdrop. And then, if we look to the other side, we have a huge glass west wall with an opening portal, where you can see the old ruins and then these new beginnings.
The images in the Cathedral are very much part of the space and modernist history. As you all know, we have Jacob Epstein and Graham Sutherland, two interwar modernist artists who, before the war, were controversial and quite shocking. But actually, by the time they come into this space, they are also the establishment figures. They are showing us that these great men of art have broken the old bounds of history. They are making individual works. They're very much known for experimentation, individualism, and materialism—using materials and inventing them in new ways. This sort of reconceptualising of their images by people into the space, making space out of their ideas, is again something that very much institutes them as the artists of the future, as part of this experimentation.
One of the issues that I would argue with this is that in a space of modernism where we're moving towards abstraction, this being a religious space brings a really strong emphasis on the figure. The figure we see here when we approach the entrance is St. Michael, depicted as a warrior angel. It brings out this idea of a very strong form of masculinity. It’s also Jacob Epstein's son-in-law, who is represented there in terms of that face at the front door as guardian and guard to the space. And John Hutton's work on the window, which shows these 66 images, which are also vaguely, at least, related to his self-portrait and his then-lover, later wife's body. There's an interesting kind of strong masculine image in the face. Then, we come to Graham Sutherland's face of Jesus, which rises above us. I think it's no surprise that it was written about at a certain time—whether it is or isn't—as the largest tapestry ever made in the world in its day. There's something about being the biggest and the largest and having this huge Jesus.
I was reading, when we were at the archive, about this one quote [paper rustling], if I can find it, that yes, when Sutherland first made the sketch for Christ in Glory, he sent it to the provost, Richard Howard, who wrote to him saying, "Just as the Italians boldly conceived an Italian face for Christ and the Spanish a Spanish face, it may come to you to conceive of an English face, which would also be universal."
There is something about these large figures that engulf us, lead us from the front to the back of the Cathedral, and that really holds us in this space. There is something about that being almost immutable. You know, it's a fixed space. They're built into the design. We don't see them being easily moved. We don't see other works taking their place. We don't see the experimentation, that radical promise that the Cathedral had in its first days, is literally embodied in an open, explorative space.
And one of the things that I was thinking about is this big shift in the way we think about space over time. It made me think about Notre Dame, which took from the 12th to the 14th century to build. So, we have this massive stretch of time and artisans and artists were involved in the framing and the making. And indeed, we moved through the Romanesque to the Gothic in the space in time. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there were significant additions—like a Pietà introduced in the 18th century—and removals and inclusions in the 19th. And they've now had that great fire, horrible fire, and we'll see another rebirth.
One of the things that I found extraordinary about Notre Dame in the 13th century was the colour work from its early days. The Middle Ages cathedral was in colour, both in the interior and the exterior. When we think of it now—if you've been to Notre Dame—it's quite sort of grim and Gothic in feel, because that colour's gone and quite weighted in terms of the stone. But it's also about how places do transmogrify and change across time. I think that one of the things about this Cathedral is that in order for it to be this living space, it needs to actually be open not to being only Basil Spence's design, but to being a space that speaks and lives with the city, that engages with the new ideas, with what's missing from the past and finds ways of being experimental.
[00:10:02]
I was going to show you this picture of one of my favourite architects, Demas Nwoko, whom I don't know if you know, but the Tate Modern is going to have an exhibition of his work and the work of other African modernists, either later this year or next year. He’s a sculptor primarily, and then began making these religious sites. The Dominican chapel is his most famous work in Ibadan.
One of the reasons I really like his work is that it contains numerous resonances with modernism. So, you can see all sorts of crossovers, in terms of designs, the idea of using the modern concrete and corrugated iron, as well as local stone, earth and wood.
However, what is interesting to me is the way he makes the space open to the external environment, so he frequently has—literally, as seen here with the chapel—air coming through and natural ventilation, and water running through the site. He often has these bits so that you actually have water that can pour in through the ceiling and form into pools inside. There’s something about that relationship to the city that I feel— sometimes you feel at the entrance here—but there is something about being enclosed; I don't want to use the word entombed, but there is a sense of being held in this space. The older space, when we're in there, has more air. And that need for air is also something we should be thinking about as we look to the future.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It's interesting you mentioned water because it's become a huge issue. There’s been water leaking, not in the design, but in quite big areas of the Cathedral. The chapel of industry was built on the side of the nave to look into the city and to always be connected to it. There were chaplains of industry.
Also, that fabric has become very, very delicate. The glass and its fixtures, you often worry if it's going to break. There has been a survey done on the fabric of the architecture. It's a building that needs a lot of repair and attention, but there often isn't enough funding to do this work, which brings me to think about what you say - the possibilities and transmogrification, what it can become, and how it can be enabled to have a more flexible and open-ended structure.
So, if you could imagine other artists in the space, who would these be for you, Catherine? And of course, you use art from elsewhere; you've just mentioned the architect. There are a lot of artists you think with in these different spaces.
CATHERINE HAHN: Yes, and I think what you've just said is really interesting as well. The building was recent in terms of cathedrals, and even with that notion of its fragility, it can lead to new possibilities and more makings. Rather than seeing it as a closed-down architectural or artistic monument, a kind of untouchable or sacred space, we can look at it as a breathing Cathedral. Not just to have artworks coming in for very short exhibitions, but to think about how you actually build new spaces into the design and new ways of treating things that are gradually falling apart slowly, you know, possibilities rather than moments of collapse.
[00:13:25]
I brought two artists, and I brought them because they're modernists. If the Cathedral would just take a little bit longer to make and a bit of time to think through its futures, these people, you can imagine, can give us different kinds of opportunities within the space, and one of them is Eva Frankfurther [page flipping]. She's an artist who's around very much at the same time, so 1930 to 1959. She had an incredibly brief life, 29 years. She tragically killed herself.
She was Jewish, and her parents came out from Berlin on one of the very last flights in 1939 to Britain, so they managed to survive. She attended St. Martin's Art School and became very well-known after the school hosted shows featuring many of the modernists of the era. Then, she gradually just retreated; she just wasn't interested in the art world and the competitive aspect of it. When she was in her 20s, she went to work in Whitechapel as a bottle washer in Lion's Coffee House or Tea House. And she painted and drew her friends and neighbours. Her best friends were all in the neighbourhood. She worked as a bottle washer, and she painted during the day.
This image, which is very famous, is of West Indian Waitresses from 1955. The women are wearing the same clothes as you see in sketches from the coffee house, so we can presume that they are working with her, and it's a late shift. And there are other people from her neighbourhood. There’s another page behind it if you want to have a look.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It’s very multicultural.
CATHERINE HAHN: I was going to say, yeah, what’s most striking about her work is that she's drawing and painting from a community in the 1950s. That community is made up largely of people from the Caribbean, Pakistan, Ireland, and Jewish people who have come to Britain. So, you have a sense of community long before Windrush, which points to the multicultural nature of inner cities.
Also, what I really love about her work is the beauty of the people. She, in her 20s, says that she sees the beauty in people of all ages. You can really get that strength, and the fact that the people are almost all working class, and you can see their hard work, you can see it. Even just in these really quick sketches of people, you know, they look like end-of-day images. On the second page, these are her self-portraits. She apparently even wore a headscarf at home at night because it was so cold in her apartment. You get these kinds of traces of the struggles that people are going through.
When I was thinking about war and cathedrals and what war means, there is something about women that's missing here, as well as the multiculturalism, diversity and that weariness in the post-war period, which this was made in. You know, we're talking about a booming city in the car industry, but there are actually a lot of struggles. People are still on rations. They're still having this real difficulty negotiating racism, cultural problems within the spaces. Frankfurther herself has this real tragic life. There's something about not just her portrait, but the portraits. Not just this idea of a universal Christian figure, but the idea of people, the real living presence. You do see it with sketches here, but there's something about having that in the building that I feel very strongly as in absence.
NIRMAL PUWAR: You have in this title of her work Woman in Overall with Curled Hair, 1951-1958, and you can see —you could say— working, labouring classes, particularly women here, which one doesn't immediately get a sense for here.
We know that Graham Sutherland’s tapestry was woven by women in France; I know we're going to talk about that later, but it's an interesting speculation of how we bring this presence further and make it more present.
CATHERINE HAHN: You're right about the tapestry. It's the notion of the behind-the-scenes-ness that is very much invisible. And so, therefore, these works point you to the other things that you should be looking at as well. There's always this notion of, you know, you see something, you see something else.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yes, the behind-the-scenes-ness is really, really important. I think it's a work we've been doing together. When you mentioned the artists, you brought along the work of Aubrey Williams here. Do you want to talk about how you're thinking of their work in the Cathedral?
CATHERINE HAHN: I thought of him for a very different reason, in fact, and I don't know if you know Aubrey Williams.
NIRMAL PUWAR: No.
[00:17:58]
CATHERINE HAHN: So, he is from Guyana and became really important in the Caribbean art movement in Britain. We may know him more in art school teaching, because he was very interested in Amerindian experiences in Guyana and the idea of time and how time moves in art. Much of the work that has been shown recently speaks to those kinds of artworks.
What the Cathedral does, and immediately when I came in here and saw the windows, I thought of Williams' work because he's an extraordinary colourist, and an abstract artist who has this kind of layered approach of light within the work, very much in the sense of how you can see and perceive it. And because of the series that he did on Shostakovich—Dimitri Shostakovich was a composer, and he was in Leningrad during the siege of Leningrad—it made me think of the war and of how this caught Aubrey Williams' attention for such a long time. So, for over a decade, he made 30 of these paintings, which he'd been moved by during the struggle for independence in Guyana, which he was very involved in. And he'd heard...
[noise in the background- speaker paused]
He heard Shostakovich’s orchestral music when he was in Guyana, and he said that it moved him for the first time in a way that he hadn't been moved before. I guess because of that, he saw him as the greatest composer. Shostakovich integrated music from African, Chinese, European, and Indian cultures. He was very interested in the idea of a total performance. When Williams heard his music for the first time in one of his symphonies, he said that he could see the colour. So, he had this extraordinary sense of synaesthesia. It's less about the painting and more about the feeling of colour. I was thinking about that, especially with the Cathedral and the fact that music is so important, that audio is so crucial in this space.
We can have this sense of what the power of his work could be, and I've done this in class, where we've actually listened to the music as well and looked at the artworks. But there is something about the fact that he made 30 of these paintings and that I've never seen them in one place. I've only ever seen one here, one there, one another. And there's something about a cathedral and the duration of time that you get in a religious space. The fact that this orchestral music was made for a big space made me really strongly think of work like this, for spaces like this.
One of the things that's really touching about Shostakovich’s work in terms of the war is that it took place during this period of the Leningrad siege. Over a million people starved in the city; half his orchestra had gone, so he needed more people. He called up everyone who could play instruments, and he got 100 people together to play this orchestral music, which was intended to be played worldwide. The BBC played it live, and they played it in the city to the people who were there, starving under siege and to the German soldiers as a kind of power, saying we won't give in. However, the sacrifice that happened during this orchestra was that the performing people would collapse, and people died.
People gave their rations to feed the orchestra so that they could play this music. When you listen to the music, it's just coordinated and distant, and it's not perfect by any means. It's a real sense of the ruptures, the life that people are living. And they're also dressed; they have to wear all these layers of clothes to keep warm, so they don't shake when they're playing. Someone who was watching them described them as sort of dressed like cabbages.
These images don’t do justice to his work at all. When you see Williams’ work, there's something profoundly moving in the way he paints and the way it's saturated, and you experience it. It has that very strong sense of a spiritual kind of presence that I feel when I see his work. They're large as well, so you also have that sense of engulfment.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It feels like you're ready to bring it here.
CATHERINE HAHN: Well, I think it would be wonderful [laughs]. I mean, I think it would be extraordinary to hear the music and the work in this space. This would be a wonderful place to have it.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yes, you mentioned the restrictions in the Cathedral's design and the significance of these other artworks, as well as what they can bring to the space. That's why I was thinking this could be an incredible conversation, a global conversation of colour, music, poverty, and political mobilisation. So, for you, these are some of the opportunities you see that are offered from inside the Cathedral, perhaps.
[00:22:30]
And I know you've mentioned the possibilities offered by the chairs as well, and a sort of hands-on engagement. Could you share what you're thinking there?
CATHERINE HAHN: Yes, I've kind of been marking out the fixity of the space; one of the things that I also was really conscious of is that it's not an art gallery. You know, it's not a space where the walls are the most important thing. You know, it's a religious space where you have the sense that there is a performance.
It’s a space in which you have a duty to the people who are coming into the space; it’s a community-oriented and civic space. You have all these other roles that it plays. We've talked before, and you told me wonderful things about local children as well. So, we really think that it has an opportunity beyond its walls.
I think that the chairs —I love the chairs— they're just such nice physical objects, but also have possibilities. Unlike in an old local church where you’re stuck in a pew with the family hassock or whatever it is, and everything feels quite fixed in a row, these chairs offer the possibility of mobility. They reflect something of what the Cathedral stands for. There’s also an earlier origin that they connect to.
I know nothing about the chairs apart from the fact that they're lovely, but I read up about them and discovered that they have sort of spread the R.D. Russell Coventry chairs across the country. They're actually just referred to as Coventry chairs, and lots of places have them. They're very nicely designed. Demas Nwoko, an architect, who does lovely chairs, which these reminded me of very strongly. Nwoko's ones have got bent legs, like they're going to walk off. There's a sense of real physicality in them.
These ones seem kind of almost pedestrian, but then they're not. There's a nice sense of the wood, and they also have this ergonomic design, very like Nwoko's. They're wide. Most people would find them comfortable. They don't have arms; you're not trapped in them. You can put them in circles. We've just moved them up here today, nice and happily, to have a chat with them. I've seen craft groups; I've seen schoolchildren. You might be facing the front for service, but you could also be doing many other things with them.
NIRMAL PUWAR: As we see here, they're squeaky. They're very squeaky. They are ageing, and there's a workshop downstairs. I think I showed you the space last time you visited, where volunteers are repairing them. There's actually a fund, so if anyone wants to help the Cathedral repair them and buy more chairs, you can sponsor a chair in a loved one's name.
CATHERINE HAHN: That's fantastic. That's so nice to know. And they have a sense of necessity. They also stack, so there's also that sense that you can put them back. It does open up the whole space for possibilities.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It does. The Cathedral team reconfigures the space of the chairs. It could be a circle, a row, or it could be that you're staring out at the city. So, yes, I'm sure we could have a long conversation about the chairs, and we could even get into some experiments, couldn't we? But there are other configurations you've been considering in terms of engagements and the possibilities. Do you want to share some of those with us?
[00:25:37]
CATHERINE HAHN: I mean, one of the things that I felt right from the beginning, and I was looking at some of the old news reels—the boulder from Bethlehem. And it was really just a quick observation that there was this advertising of the fact that it was hands-on, so that people came and they laid their hands on the font. There was something quite striking to me about the idea of the big monolith building, and then the notion that you have a personal connection, a connection that also brings people closer to God, in terms of a religious space. But also, the idea of a space of interaction, of physical interaction, which I thought was really powerful in its origins.
And I mean, when we look through the archive, there were just these layers of activity sheets as well that really brought that home as well, that notion of the crafting. So, we're talking about that making. And I don't know enough about it today, but I do think there is something about making in this space, you know, when people have the opportunity to. That is so crucial. We often discuss this with art galleries and museums, such as what you can bring to the table and make your own mark. That’s what both the chairs and these craft engagements and this hands-on stuff sort of brought me to.
And it took me to your work, really, as well. My first opening to this Cathedral was through Noise of the Past in 2008. That is my reference point for it. It's quite interesting to me because I came to it through this mark that was noting the absences, the absences of all the colonial subjects who were volunteers and fighters in the First and Second World Wars. And, I mean, the sheer weight of people. I remember it was about three out of ten, or 30 per cent, of the people who were from the Caribbean, India, and other places within the colonial spaces. [chatter in the background]
The work that you did here offered the opportunity to see people and raise those questions about why aren't people here? Where are the missing people in this space? But also, the way that it was done in terms of bringing in noise and light, hands-on engagement and the dialogue. It's a really powerful thing, having people talking from the two pulpits. It is this idea of a cross conversation across the space and the idea of not just a call-and-response to someone echoing, but the notion that a call-and-response is also about amplifying. It's also about disrupting so that, you know, if you ask someone a question, they're an active participant in answering. It's not just something that is scripted, if you like. It had a real sense of being here and changing the space. I was really touched by a lot of the things you were talking about, like the bells ringing during it and the lights going off.
And, I mean, it’s just that distractive element — but also the real elements of what it feels like here. And so, the fact that it becomes very much imbricated in its history — as a means of renegotiating it — and the fact that that has wider implications, which I might actually mention later as we go on. So, those were things I feel are quite important — or very important — in terms of opportunities for more, or just to be here.
NIRMAL PUWAR: I know you remind me that Noise of the Past was in 2008, but it still feels as if it hasn't fully landed, the noise of the past and the colonial and post-colonial presence, because there's been a lot of conversation on Radio 4.
The Coventry Cathedral has featured it in terms of the VE Day victory in Europe. Of course, it's mentioned that the war was still on in the East. We didn't have VJ Day (Victory in Japan) because my father was still at war in World War Two, while VE Day was happening, as a very young man in the East. And also, we know that it ended with the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb.
And so, there's all this sort of, yes, defeating of the fascists; it is absolutely essential, we remember and recognise that. But at the same time, how do we globally situate that and think of the erasure of empire that Stuart Hall has mentioned so many times for us? The erasure continues. So, we have these spikes of information, but the erasure carried on. And I wonder, how do we create a dent in that narrative?
CATHERINE HAHN: I think you're so right. It feels like, where is it? It's so palpably absent as well now. When I was reading back through your work, I realised it's so live because these narratives have gone on beyond this space.
I mean, it was over the road at the Herbert and then, you know, London and we saw films of it at Goldsmiths. So, it has had this kind of projected life, and it has gone on to change other stories. And then also the fact that this is not, as you say, about commemorating or having a nostalgic relationship with the colony or with the abuses of the past.
But I was really struck here when I was reading what you were saying about the Friends of Coventry Cathedral. I think you might have actually mentioned it in your text. I also wrote that down, that they were hoping for the Friends of Coventry Cathedral to pull in the other communities in the city for a later event. And I was thinking, it's as if it's somewhere external, as if the city and the diversity are happening externally, and that the friends would like to have some sort of relationship with it, as opposed to it being an integral part of the city here?
NIRMAL PUWAR: This is an ongoing conversation—an ongoing process of mobilisation. All the different administrative facets of the Cathedral are involved in various ways, including the Friends of the Cathedral, who give generously. They are continually thinking about the Cathedral’s relationship to the city. The events and engagement teams are doing this as well.
Now, I'd wondered if we could just go back to the stone, the font, what became the font, the rock from outside of Bethlehem that became the font. You mentioned the personal connection and the fact that people could touch it, the tactility of it, because when it was carved out of the stone, people actually asked to have pieces of it. People wrote from all over the place, asking for pieces of that stone, and I have met some people who have those pieces, who value those pieces of rock.
I think it was last year we did an event here, part of the Pod's Outside(R) Zine festival, and we had an event alongside the stone; we called it Rocking It, in a double sense, you know, with a bit of humour. People came together, and we had students, we read words from Palestine alongside a geologist who could provide the so-called facts, but at the same time was very aware of the geopolitics of the situation. Stuart, who was the geologist, actually had students, some of his PhD students, who have gone on to live in, go back to Palestine and Gaza, and he was trying to help one student, Mohammed, to leave the region during the war.
So, the stone becomes this planetary time, but also a geopolitical touchstone today. That is one possibility. I know you have other thoughts on the whole reconciliation mission, peace and reconciliation that have come out of the history and the story of the Cathedral.
[00:33:24]
CATHERINE HAHN: Yes, I think, in terms of what's happening in Gaza now, it could never be more prescient [voice echoing in the background]. I was really pleased to see that there was a statement made by the Cathedral about what's happening in Gaza and mentioning Trump as well, which shows you how live and how important it is to touch on these issues. Both your work and others work that I'm going to mention— I'm working towards the Herbert now— has done in terms of reconciliation is acknowledging that reconciliation— which is one of the Cathedral's aims, and very much in South Africa, obviously, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission— that it doesn't come without real discomfort, pain and real acknowledgement. It is not a one-off event. It is this constant, as you say, retouching and going back to these experiences, over and over again and living with discomfort.
It also requires reparation. One of the biggest issues in terms of reparation is representation, specifically the involvement of people from within, in making the decisions. It’s important that the people who were able to make those decisions are diverse, and have these histories, and so the effort is more than just surface deep.
So, I guess that's also about how you make these depths of stories. One of the things I was thinking about in terms of the challenges the place faces is due to the art galleries right next door. Art museums have mobile, changing art gallery spaces; it's easier for them, whether they hold on to new narratives or at least stage interventions and new forms of art. Literally on the doorstep of the Cathedral, I was looking back at The Pan-African Connection exhibition and thinking about the fact that it happened in 1983. That’s shocking to me now—partly because of age, I guess—but that’s 40 years ago. It’s been a long time.
It was the first big black art group exhibition, saying that people here are not being represented, not being exposed to art. It confronted all those absences. And when you think about what's changed since then—the absences they were pointing out, and what Claudette Johnson was writing about—we’re still seeing those patterns repeated. Even now, we’re hearing the same language used again and again. I had a picture from that exhibition somewhere… Where is it? I was just thinking that this work I know was in the exhibition…
NIRMAL PUWAR: What’s this?
[00:35:45]
CATHERINE HAHN: This is Claudette Johnson's work of a woman—nude figure arms overhead, with an earring. These were pointing out some of the problems with modernism. It kind of reminded me of the masculinist, Western discourse, Picasso in particular and his imagery of women in objectification. So, she was making this work, which is very much speaking to the embodied presence of a woman, a black woman, and those absences in art spaces.
She works very close to the canvas. When she's working, there's also a physicality in the way she works, which is really translated into the artworks. You have a sense of the presence as well. I was thinking a lot about the words that people were using in that exhibition, Eddie Chambers and Keith Piper were in there, and there was this visceral sort of slash-and-burn kind of punk aesthetic. That was very semiotic. So, it was very sort of image-text based and quite in your face in terms of issues and really pointing to the racism of the day. Coventry council and some people in the gallery complained about the work. Some of the workers in the gallery on the floor accused the exhibition of racism, which is such a classic response, you know, exposed racism and then you're accused of it. It was actually changed to have a warning on the front door as an “adult exhibition” because of the materials.
But that happened in the 1980s, at the time when we had Thatcherism and this really strong right-wing kind of presence in the country. I feel like the conversations they had then were so important right on the doorstep here. That exhibition took place here, but also at the Africa Centre, the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and in Nottingham. It really changed the face of art—it introduced a new language and was on show for quite a long time. We can trace its influence through the work of artists like Rasheed Araeen’s The Other Story, through INIVA, and into other future events. I see those connections reflected in your own work here, too. So, I feel that these two spaces you’ve created—these sites of ongoing work—are themselves part of that same discourse and cultural legacy.
Eddie Chambers was actually writing about that back then with his PhD, about the kind of black discourse and the white discourse and the fact that they're very different in terms of exhibition. But the black discourse actually has this live effect, this impact. So, I think reconciliation is also about how these spaces reconcile or get a grip on what they need to have in a space, whether it's a religious space or a gallery, whatever it may be, and they often involve big offerings that serve a civic function. How do you make yourselves fully available?
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yes, the Cathedral has, I think, a new Canon just come in for art and reconciliation, after Mary Gregory left to become a bishop in Reading. There is an installation which has just opened today, I think, by George Wagstaff. But there are pieces of art coming in all the time and in the conversation.
So, Claudette Johnson, though, is interesting because she was recently nominated for the Turner Prize, and figures are a big part of her work. As you say, it’s also about the texture, the texture of cloth, hair, skin, the presence of larger-than-life figures in your life, but they're also large on the walls. I often think what it would be like to have some of her work here?
CATHERINE HAHN: Yeah, I saw her recently at the Courtauld as well as the Tate. She's very present in public consciousness now, which is fantastic. I think it would be wonderful to see her work here. We’re talking about someone who's got a long span of work from the 1980s, and we're also thinking about contemporary artists. It’s important to have both brand new makers in our time now, as well as historic figures.
Another thing I thought about when we were talking about the glass at the front was the fact that one of the works was vandalised, and that Barbara Walker, who's another one of these early iconographic artists, had this opportunity to have work put at the door.
What was really extraordinary about her work—I know you know her work—but she's done a lot of work around soldiers, the absence of soldiers, and the absence of black soldiers, and the war of absence imagery. She puts people into the subject and also removes them, so that we have this dissonant image making.
NIRMAL PUWAR: She has cutouts of figures, or they become embossed, and just, you know, the texture lives there. In fact, the first time I saw Barbara’s work was her piece on war at the Herbert Art Gallery. It’s part of their permanent collection.
CATHERINE HAHN: Yes, and there’s this idea of rubbing out, of erasure. She sometimes takes her work down too, even when it’s already installed on the wall. So, there’s this really interesting play with imagery.
What I really loved about her—and what I thought was so significant—was when the front door glass of the Cathedral was vandalised. She was invited, as one of the artists, to install a temporary piece in that space. Because it was during Covid-19, her work became a kind of dialogue with her children, about not being able to see them. She included images of childhood objects: a toy—some kind of teddy bear, I think—a few bracelets, and a skateboard.
I thought that the skateboard was so poignant because it's so mundane; it's a day-to-day object for children. It was what people couldn't do during Covid-19; you can't travel, you can't see your children, your children can't go out and play. It also has this wheel, which reminds me of the cars in Coventry. The fact that she chose such a mundane, everyday, immediately recognisable symbol of childhood and freedom—and the fact that it was on the front of the Cathedral— is incredibly touching, and it really connects the inside and the outside world.
It spoke to all those things that we're thinking about, like how do you get air in with this day-to-day object? And it’s completely contemporary. It also made me reflect on how moments of destruction can become moments of opportunity. Things come down, things go up. And that’s not new—Notre Dame has been changing for centuries. And there have been times when people have been prepared to say: new things need to replace the old.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yeah, you mentioned the skateboard because Duncan, our sound producer here, will know that in front of the Cathedral, on the steps and the steps of the Herbert, there are actually young people skateboarding all the time.
That's the main noise going on [laughs]. It's interesting you also pick up on that as an outsider. I wondered if you had any other thoughts, as someone from the outside. You often mentioned to me that I am from the outside. Are there other things you wanted to call our attention to?
CATHERINE HAHN: Yeah, I was also thinking about that—about the sketch of the skateboard—when I was thinking about her and what it offers. It’s true, it has this really nice quality. It also ties the gallery and the space together, even in the older part. There’s a real sense of movement there. And that’s something we lost during Covid.
It made me think that, in fact, it's not just about war; we're living with all sorts of problems now, you know, new racism, discrimination, refugee crisis, Gaza, LGBTQ+ rights, trans rights, and unresolved issues related to colonial issues. I think of all these kinds of struggles.
But there’s something about the exciting opportunity that the Cathedral holds. I see these connections, as you say, that bring the place together. But I wonder how we might imbricate that more strongly.
And I was thinking—very much as an outsider—that I was excited by the fact that when you read about protests here, like the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) protests, they came here. The Windrush protest came to the steps here as well. The fact that it’s seen as a place where you would want to be or feel that it has the power to change things, that it should amplify or echo voices. People definitely do feel that there must be something here, in this space, that you need to stand on those steps and do something with a loudspeaker. There's something about that that gives possibility, at least.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yeah, we mentioned the CND marches from the earlier years, and some members of the clergy have been connected with CND, as well as Amnesty International in the past, and disarmament. Our recent canon for worship and welcome has also come from South Africa, Nitano Muller, whom you met, Catherine, on your last visit. We actually took a photo of him in the ruins, holding an image of Desmond Tutu, because he was his mentor.
Given that your first research project—your PhD—was on South Africa, on reconciliation and the rainbow nation, and you did it through art galleries, but also a whole history of whiteness, and imperialism, I know you have particular thoughts on that, especially in the context of Nitano being here, and also Desmond Tutu’s visit, when he came here to give the peace lecture.
A lot of people were involved in that invitation, not just canons from the Cathedral, but also local activists from the city. One of them was Ann Farr, who organised a group of volunteers to sell produce from Palestine, with proceeds going directly back to Palestine. They sold olive oil, handicrafts made from olive trees, embroidery, purses, and handbags made by women in Palestine. She had a stall at a very busy local event—the Earlsdon Festival. So many people have been part of that event, of Desmond Tutu coming here, standing on one of these pulpits, giving a peace lecture.
I would like you to call on your massive experience and expertise, including your PhD, which had a great title, in thinking about South Africa, actually.
CATHERINE HAHN: I mean, it's interesting because St. George's Cathedral —I went more than once—I went there when I was working with young people who were street homeless.
And we went to the cathedral, which also has a similar history in terms of its overwhelming infrastructure. I think it was Boesak (Allan Boesak) —I can’t quite remember who it was—but one of the people who was there. It was a Christmas Eve service, and the children on the street really wanted to go to the late mass, so we went with them.
And it was a packed white audience, and he said to them, “Did you come in to see Tutu today? Because if you did—and you're not normally here—you're going to be disappointed—he’s in Gug’s.”
But there was something about the fact that people had wanted to go to see him. It was almost like this kind of individuals. And something about political/religious kind of, the kind of people who took real risks in those days who were religious and did it because they had some kind of conviction. There is something also about that personal approach that was present in South Africa before the end of apartheid, where there was a real sense of the, for people who were engaged, it was risky, like it was actually really hard.
And I think there is something about spaces like this. I think it's fantastic that someone from South Africa is here; I also think it's really fantastic that there are LGBTQ+ conversations happening at this time, because it’s just shocking what's happening in terms of legislation. But I also think that people had to be prepared to take risks, and big spaces have voices. And so, more than just the individual—more than just Tutu or an emblem—it’s about something bigger. St. George’s Cathedral now has a window with Tutu in it, and I was thinking, that’s great, I think it’s wonderful. But there’s also something about all the people—that sense that was very present when you were involved in struggle politics—that it was about everyone. It’s about how you keep going back to that, which was something so palpable in South Africa toward the end, before the change. Things were happening because people were making them happen.
And I think that’s a bit like your work, and the work happening next door—it carries that kind of resonance. People take it on board, and they get inspired by it. At the time, it might seem quite small or like a one-off—people might ask, why are we even doing this? But it does change the space. Even something as simple as getting the light turned off on the Graham Sutherland work that took real effort, which is surprising, because it’s not an idol, it’s a tapestry. There's a danger of turning places into precious objects. But the fact that your work went on and became something somewhere else, I think, was really important. Fundamentally, it changes things.
NIRMAL PUWAR: Yeah, I think that comment you made, that big spaces have big voices, that's really, really significant. It's also a part of why people gather. They do it often on their own, and they decide their demonstration will end on the Cathedral steps. That's been happening quite a lot in Coventry with Gaza and the struggle for Palestinian independence.
[voices echoing in the background]
When they gather there, you do feel the force of the conversation. It's almost as if we have the formal organ here from Norway, but it's almost as if they're another organ; they're another sound that's creaking to come inside and to be part of, as you say, the big conversation.
So, Catherine and I work very closely on our book “Inside and Outside”. We're always thinking of insider and outsiderness. I know you say you're an outsider, but you've been inside in many ways as well, even just as a Goldsmiths student and an academic. So, if you had a fantasy project of what you would like to unleash in this space, what would it be? You probably can't bring skateboards inside [laughs].
CATHERINE HAHN: I feel like I wouldn’t be the person for that. And I’m not entirely outside of all spaces—but I am to Coventry, to be honest, because I don’t know it well. It’s not really my city. So, I feel like it probably wouldn’t be my project. I’d really like to see people who actually live and work in the city leading that kind of work, thinking about how to reinvent the space.
I also think that the kind of modernist ambition for big projects has died. But then, we also don’t get the opportunity to make big projects anymore. And I do actually think that there is room, you know, for expansion, building on, building off, or even taking things down. For me, it would be more about seeing the opportunity.
When I was first looking at what the plan was for the space, and how Basil Spence won that competition, I tried to find the other competition entries because I really wanted to see what the other possibilities were. The only one I could find had a tent-like structure in the old building. I was really interested in that, in the old Cathedral—the way you see it used as a market space in photographs. I definitely think there should be more done around having conversations with local Coventry people about what the possibilities are, particularly around diversity and multiculturalism here, and then go from there.
NIRMAL PUWAR: It's been amazing, Catherine, to have you here, and I hope we'll have you here again.
CATHERINE HAHN: It's been an absolute pleasure. It's also been really thought-provoking. So, thank you so much. Thank you.
References
Eva Frankfurther 1930-1959
West Indian Waitresses c.1955
Two Women and a Child c.1958
Woman in Overall with Curled Hair c.1951-58
Self-portrait in Red c. 1951-8
Aubrey Williams 1926-1990
Shostakovich 10th Symphony, Opus 93, 1981
Shostakovich 6th Quartet, Opus 101, 1981
Symphony No 5, opus 47 (Shostakovich), 1981
Demas Nwoko 1935-
Dominican Chapel, Ibadan, 1970-
Chapel Reception Area,
Benedictine Monastery at EwuEdo, 1987
Images of these works are available online
Texts
Puwar, N. (2011) ‘Noise of the Past: spatial interruptions of war, nation, and memory’, The Senses and Society, 6(3), pp.325-345.
Hahn, C. (2025) ‘British history at Tate Britain post-Brexit: rich, white men and space invaders’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 0(0).
Hahn, C. (2023) ‘Reclaiming history in the British Museum entranceway: imperialism, patronage and female, queer and black legacies’, Rethinking History, 27(2), pp.187–220.
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