Outside the Box
Participatory art at Tate Modern
In 2017 I was commissioned to create a participatory art piece for Who Are We?, a cross-platform event designed for the Tate Exchange (Tate Modern) reflecting on identity, belonging, migration and citizenship. The 6-day programme of activity included artists and practitioners from UK and Europe responding to and challenging notions of binaries such as us versus them, migrants versus ‘natives’ and artists versus audiences. A key principle for the programme was to enable co-creation between artists, academics, activists and audiences.
Being an immigrant to the UK and living in times of the recent Brexit referendum, my response to the commission was to counteract rising xenophobia and racism in public discourse. I was paired with two academics to exchange ideas with and have conversations about the topics and larger contexts which helped clarify my approach to the artwork. You can read more about this process and their academic viewpoints in this interview and in this blog post.
I collected stories of solidarity from individuals in person and via social media, focusing on everyday acts of kindness to highlight empathy and the power of small, positive actions. I illustrated selected stories onto cardboard boxes that were stacked into a colourful sculpture, giving the audience permission to touch and move the artwork. The tactile experience invited visitors to spend a longer time with the sculpture and immerse themselves in the stories.
The installation was successful in sparking hope and empathy based on visitor feedback:
“I was quietly moved”
“I feel a mixture of awful and awesome”
“It gives me hope. It’s so easy to dismiss people and think the worst of them.”
“It’s a good reminder of the benevolence of people”
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