- Christine Toelle, 2024
—Single Channel Video, 2’ 19’’
The documentary explores how diasporic cultural expressions are crucial in shaping individual and collective identities within diaspora communities, specifically for Southeast Asians in London. The video combines auto-ethnography and curatorial study, creating a visual story-telling of internal and fragmented thoughts on representation. Through the video, viewers witness the creator's daily transits in London, documenting the visits and encounters in liminal 'between' with other Southeast Asian diasporic communities. It also features other artworks by artists who discuss similar ideas and criticism of coloniality, political identity, and navigation of 'home'. The creator aims to challenge simplistic and reductive representations of cultures and peoples by showcasing the complexities and fluidity of diaspora communities. Specifically, in her process of curating an exhibition which derived from the same problem, the term highlighted is 'Other Asians'.
- Ella Porteous, 2024
—3 small prints, 21 x 21 cm
By researching human mobility through the artistic process of eco printing and natural dyeing, the dichotomy of migrant and citizen can be reimagined. Looking to the British landscape which is rich with the legacies of human mobility disrupts the presupposed distinction between stasis as natural and movement as deviant. I have created three compositions by extracting colours and patterns from plants foraged from my local spaces in London, researching their origins throughout the process and paying attention to the legacies of migration embedded in the British landscape. The art exposes the irony of creating a territory and political structure which excludes migrants when that same land is bustling and rich with legacies of movement and migration. I have used the Argentinian lemon verbena, gingko leaves originating from China, Mexican dahlia petals, Australian eucalyptus, the transnational ancient fern, British twisted hazel, and other plants collected from the ground of my street. This gathering of various plants with wide ranging origins in Britain celebrates human movement and commemorates the intertwining of various cultures within Britain.
Nirmiti Vinay Sawant, 2024
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Reflective Essay
The essay talks about the concept of belonging and its importance in the concept of diaspora. The work talks about a novel (on diaspora) and relates it to the theory of diaspora.
Rbeeza Mobeen, 2024
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Oil painting, 42 x 59.4 cm
People’s emotions impede- often discourage- genuine engagement with knowledge (Ioanide, 2015). Knowledge- much like emotions- is subjective, and is produced. Here is some knowledge about the artwork: The painting is a self portrait. Created with oil on thick paper, you see a distortion of what should be a face- my face- obscured by drips and speckles of paint the colours of a sickly child suffering from what may be an acid attack. She is wearing a red headscarf, a stark contrast of deep maroon and poppy to the cold, icy blues and pallid highlights of the cheekbones and forehead. There may be an eye, an eyebrow, maybe even some lips behind the rain of wet paint. This portrait is too horrible to hang up at home, and so it lies rolled up on top of my wardrobe so that I don’t see anymore obvious signs of how I feel as a brown, muslim, first-generation immigrant in a post-Brexit Britain.