Dear readers,
I've now been in Bristol for two months, and I can only say the city is a gift that keeps on giving...
I'm also in the middle of my writing residency at the Arnolfini gallery, and this will come first in the form of a tour of the exhibition 'Still I Rise' organised on Saturday 30 November, from 4 to 6pm.
Before my tour, join me to see this film:
SCREENING | EXCORIATE – SOPHIE HOYLE - Arnolfini Sat. 30/11, from 11am @arnolfiniarts
SCREENING | EXCORIATE – SOPHIE HOYLE
Saturday, 30th November 2019, 11:00 to 18:00
Free
Free
Excoriate (2019), explores embodied experiences of chronic illness and attempts to reclaim bodily autonomy from biomedical institutions, while considering different processes of healing. Each Saturday, the Still I Rise screening programme shares a work of video art or film that profiles themes of feminisms, gender, and resistance through the moving image.
The film includes footage shot at the Comfrey Project in Gateshead – a community garden and centre that offers horticultural therapy for refugees and people seeking asylum, and a DIY biohacking lab with queer performance collective Quimera Rosa. Other footage includes drawings onto the artist’s skin, used medical ephemera, and methods for overcoming self-harming behaviours, including compulsive skin picking i.e. Dermatillomania or Excoriation Disorder. The soundtrack is composed of binaural beats including beta and theta waves, used to treat anxiety and trauma and sleep disorders through ‘neuroacoustics’.
Sophie Hoyle is an artist and writer whose practice explores an intersectional approach to post-colonial, queer, feminist, anti-psychiatry and disability issues. Their work looks at the relation of the personal to (and as) political, individual and collective anxieties, and how alliances can be formed where different kinds of inequality and marginalisation intersect. They relate personal experiences of being queer, non-binary and part of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) diaspora to wider forms of structural violence. From lived experience of psychiatric conditions and trauma, or PTSD, they began to explore the history of biomedical technologies rooted in state and military surveillance and control.
Excoriate was originally developed as a multi-channel video installation during The Shape Arts 2019 Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, hosted by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
Screening in Arnolfini’s Dark Studio, Level 2.
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Photographs by American artist Judy Chicago
I'm very very proud to have been chosen as the new writer-in-residence in the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, this means a lot as a writer and is the perfect outcome for a special and intense journey in the UK...
My first blog post – that I’ll discuss on 30 November at the Arnolfini – is thought as an introduction to my writing. I'll post it here on Sunday 1st of December.
The other entries will have me discuss these three main issues:
-Feminism for people of colours and community groups who don’t feel included;
-Resistance in the context of convergence: women and men, European people and non-European people need to rethink this world in order to bring change… And art is a wonderful tool to help in achieving this goal;
-The role of fiction in representing resistance and feminist roles/figures.
I’ve discussed with people working at the Arnolfini, others met in the exhibition, people I’ve invited to join me here like Lawrence Hoo...
Resistance to intolerance and feminism are facing new challenges nowadays: counter-resistance, repetitive rise of non-progressive powers, inequalities, and a lack of discussion between the different communities in our cities and nations, in the western world and beyond.
Having travelled most of my adult life, one thing life has taught me however is that no one has the perfect answer, and that us being forced to live together in multicultural cities like Bristol, Paris, Marseilles, London Nairobi, Miami, New York, Berlin or Lisbon, to name a few I've spent a bit of time in, might be the only way to integrate the best of each civilisation's lessons...
Anyway, as a writer, a reader, a journalist, I strongly believe in the power of stories to address the complexity of our era. And hopefully, these stories will bring some light to these issues, one woman at a time, to deal with the ever-evolving issues of gender, progress and resistance.
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Painting by Iraqi artist Hayv Kharaman
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TOUR | WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE: MELISSA CHEMAM
Arnolfini Gallery's presentation:
We are delighted to have Melissa Chemam working with us as writer-in-residence throughout Still I Rise. On this tour, she will link pieces of writing to a selection of artworks currently exhibited in our galleries.
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Freelance journalist/reporter, radio producer and writer, Melissa Chemam has been presenting her work for print, television and radio since 2004. She has reported for the BBC World Service, Reuters, DW, France 24, and Vox Africa, among others; while her writing has been featured in The Public Art Review, Transfuge Magazine, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Skin Deep, The Bristol Cable, Bristol 24/7, CIRCA Art Magazine, Public Pressure, and The Times Literary Supplement.
Writing is her favoured means of expression, covering literature, the arts, music, but especially social change, migration issues & international politics. Passionate about travel, she has lived in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi, Bangui (in Central African Republic), Bristol, and Paris (where she was born in 1980). She has travelled to more than 14 African countries in the past 10 years, and 40 countries worldwide.
Her first book published, ‘Massive Attack – Out of the Comfort Zone’, on Bristol’s music, art and politics, was released in the UK in March 2019 by Tangent Book.
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More events on the gallery's facebook page:
And my review of the exhibition here:
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See you there...
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