Episode 02: THIS UN-BELONGING BELONGS TO ME

We speak with MARIA AMIDU, an artist, whose work explores the relationship between people and place, and what is hidden, obscured or unspoken, a clarion voice of the common experience. She unmasks the ignored mutable stories of migration, un-belonging, and remembering - what it means to be anchored while simultaneously erased. As part of her creative process, she asks, “what part of the other’s story belongs to us”? Isn’t the impact of the experience, rather than the details, the true place of transformation? To see Maria’s work: https://www.mariaand.co

Maria’s current social practice artwork takes the form of artist’s books and site-specific print and photographic installations, with occasional integration of her craft practice as a glassmaker. Some of her many projects are: ‘Somewhere’.  ‘Edge, Threshold, Brink’. ‘Let it be done as it is desired’. ‘A moment of your time’. ‘Where are we?’ ‘Dolphin Loves Disco’. She has exhibited nationally, in the United Kingdom, and internationally with a number of museums, galleries and organizations including Houses of Parliament, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Turner Contemporary, Victoria and Albert Museum, Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital, Foundling and Hackney Museums. Her work is in a number of collections and she has won a wide range of fellowships, grants and awards. She is currently a Phd candidate at the Royal College of Art. Her research is titled Making that Remembers. 

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

“And I think, when you’re othered, where you're constantly navigating that as well, you're inhabiting this space, literally and psychologically and metaphorically, it's a constant in the uncertainty of it all. That's also really important. It's a very particular lived experience. I think the generative-ness of the lived experience doesn't get celebrated enough. I feel like, if you turn on the news, and there's an item about some displacement of peoples, more often than not, the tone of it is derisory. But if we sat and thought about it for a moment, truly thought about what was happening to whoever the person is or the people are, it's really profound and it's become so mundane now, this conversation about, oh, well, there's a group of people that escaped from here, or they left there, and then they traveled on a boat, and now they're here and now they're in irritation, and we just want to send them back because we don't want them here anymore. And you just think, well, actually just think for a minute about what that individual person has experienced to get to this point. And I think that bit, that in between bit, just does not get the credence it deserves, the courage of that individual, the trauma of the experience of having to traverse one place to get to another place of safety. That narrative really needs to shift.” FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT READ HERE