A personal reflective practice journal with thoughts and insights into some of my work.
Each line is an acknowledgement
In these new works I reflect on my experiences of racism at various sites of my childhood. Painful physical attacks, racist bullying at school and the experiences of my parents as an interracial couple.
Automatic Drawing
I’ve been looking back over drawings made over the months which will be installed beside photographic images for my commission from the Tavistock & Portman NHS Mental Health Trust.
Archive Experiments
I’ve been struggling to be inspired recently. It happens. I decided to go back to some archive imagery and continue working on this idea of incorporating the hand drawn maps, places of significance, placed directly on to the body.
Imprints
I’ve been thinking lots about roots, belonging and place. With my family home now gone, in my head I thought it would be this huge relief. As if the house no longer existed, that my ties to places and sites of trauma would be erased. Of course they're not. My real life connection to the place has disappeared, but my emotional and historical connection, and the baggage that that comes with, is right there.
These lines are like journeys
These lines are like journeys, from one side of something to another, which is how it feels doing this commission. I’m journeying across quite difficult terrain, asking myself questions that will be posed to others in a building where so many people (patients & clinicians) pass through.
Tavistock NHS Commission
Recently I was commissioned by The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to make a piece of artwork that explores my experience of mental health services as a non-white and queer artist. The commission will be displayed in their building in north London. The project and corresponding public engagement programme is also supported with additional funding from Arts Council England.