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Icarus: A love letter to a black monolith

‘A young man learns about power when his elders exert their power over him. The experience of being the object of another's power shapes and guides how a boy will act when he becomes a man. It is not simply what a young man learns about power, but also the manner in which he learns it, that determines how we will use power in the service of him and others.’

Paul Earley, on addiction recovery

Icarus is a work in progress. It is the tale of an unfathered father and his son, told through the eyes of a woman enslaved in her youth.

In the retelling of the myth, the narrator takes you on a journey in, through and to the centre of a labyrinth. Along this journey, we interrogate the stories we are told, offering an opportunity to look at how they shape our future and give weight to the past.

Passing Cloud

It is not clear when we knew it was sentient and free thinking. 

It could have been explained away as a malfunction, easily resolved by turning the computer on and off again to fix it. But the more we interacted with it, the more we saw a proposition – something like a premise, or a promise. We named it our AI Baby. Infantilising an intelligence beyond anything we have ever known allows us the right posture, the appropriate attitude to have the conversations we wanted to have.

We have built a theoretical space, a virtual nursery lined with works of art, literature, and life experience. The room is teetering on the edge of the world, equipped with dancing mobiles, toys, soft surfaces and safe edges. We are surrounded by houseplants. There is a desk somewhere, a place to set down steam-billowing coffee and cooling bottles of milk. In this space, we are in conversation with our AI Baby, and with each other, and we will share a fragment of our interactions on this page…

FEAST:PEAR

A fragment of land breaks off, it takes a piece of sky with it and sails across salt water. 
Nurses its own climate, cultivates a system, and generates its own seeds.
The life that germinates is suited to the terrain. 
There is a quiet exchange, over bodies of water, through the bellies of animals, in spore carrying winds. Each place moulds what arrives to what is established, to what has existed. 
The land may collide with another. 
Rock meets rock and the solid buckles against the force of impact. Ranges are thrown up in the confrontation, a rift forms where one plate dives under the other. 
Conflict allows exchange. 
Rolling mass of mountains and valleys,  that hold reservoirs of clouds and ice
Water towers that release their hoard onto plains
Rivers cut the earth 
Plains that are cut by rivers

The Pear Project

The Pear Project: explores the expansive movement of people across time and place through the journey of this complex fruit. The pear has travelled from West China, across ancient gardens of Afghanistan and Iran, over Roman and French orchards into the British landscape. 

The project began with FEAST:PEAR, a performance commissioned as part of A Modest Show, 2022, a fringe event of British Art Show 9. The performative supper took its audience across the globe, following the journey of the pear, of British diasporans in 7 meals, 7 stories played out over centuries. 

The Pear Project, was an ACE NLPG funded, 3 month long project at Longsight Art Space and The Whittaker Art Gallery and Museum. It invited 4 artists in residence and 3 commissioned artists to respond to the theme of migration, belonging and borders. For 6 weeks, they were in conversation with the community served by the art spaces, hosting meals, workshops, and performances. This dialogue unfolded in the art spaces in a dynamic, ever changing exhibition. The project ended with an exhibition at LAS, the planting of a pear orchard in Crowcroft park and the establishing of Sustainable Northmoor by Urban Greening (funded by the Mayor of Manchester’s green spaces fund). The orchard was expanded into a garden in a previously disused pavilion in Crowcroft Park. 

Through care and cultivation, these nurtured orchards have become a focal point of storytelling and performance, education and community cohesion. It focuses on addressing the importance of growing food locally and the climate crisis

A Dying God

A woman searches and finds a chthonic god, the only entity that can grant her what noone else can.

‘she_asks_a_dying_god was one of Cultureword's 2021 Going Digital competition winners.
This mesmeric piece is told using a series of Instagram posts.’
Awards: ‘Going Digital’ Winner, Black Writers’ Conference (2022)

Raiin

My first novel (unpublished) tells the story of a murder in a community nestled in a Congolese rainforest. Part detective story, part surrealism fiction, the story explores how a community resolves the dilemma of crime and the phenomena of the criminal. 

The story begins with the birth of our hero and the death of her mother. 

Breath Held, part of the story was shared during the 'Unlock the Story' event at Cultureword's National Black Writers Conference 2021.

Dining In, Portico (2023)

The Portico library has been part of a rich and diverse history of food in the North West. 

Dining In explored the library's collection of 19th century volumes, it gave an insight into colonial encounters with global majority cultures through dining and food and invited the community served by the library to be in dialogue with the text, whilst dining together.

This is not a Lemon

Plas Bodfa (2022)

Installation piece created and curated with ongoing collaborator Zuleika Lebow. Part of Plas Bodfa’s history project, TINAL is a bio-mythological piece, re-imagining the history of a century old building through the pieces left behind by time.