Comprising of a variety of works created over the last five years, the exhibition builds upon the interrogation of my individual and familial identity, touching on broader questions about memory, experience and archive. Artworks give rise to different textures, layers and lens-based mediums, including photographic slides, projection, and printed textiles. I am a participant and image-maker in a series of self-portraits that centre my identity as a Black woman/non-binary body. Inspired by archival photographs of my grandfather, I invite questions on how the racialised body has been seen and received from one generation to the next. Family histories continue to offer a space for reflection in a textile hanging that re-frames the family photograph. It documents the ongoing personal journey into my family archive through photo albums and conversations with relatives. The fractured nature of these histories is reflected in photographs that have been divided into quarters, an acknowledgement of the fact that these spaces often constitute loss as well as discovery. A more personal archive is seen in a series of 35mm slides created from photographs taken during my last year living in Portugal, and my first year residing in the UK. Images of ex-partners, friends and settings on both sides of the Channel demonstrate the community found in moments between people and places. I like the possibility of interaction with visitors, offering them the possibility to change these fragments of my journey by inserting slides into the handheld viewer and looking through it as an observer.

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Format presents: East Meets West 22 Exhibition