BETWEEN TRENCHES

How does each individual delve into their inheritance, selfhood and overall identity? How does each of us see the relevance of such questioning? In what way can we cross-examine these structures and create new pathways of understanding?

The idea is not to create a set and finished proposition in our thinking. Especially when identity itself can change. As we all have a different way of seeing ourselves and our experiences are diverse, we are looking to catch a glimpse of each person’s uniqueness while finding overlapping and meeting points.

Construction, reconstruction and disintegration of home, of language and belonging, in respect to displacement, generational trauma and family dynamics, can lead to a volatile rebuilding of oneself, or a joyous celebration of character. Perhaps a bit of both.

A heritage can be unstable, inconsistent, sumptuous, abundant, multi-faceted while full of patterns.

How do these matters shape or reshape memory and culture? What is transmission and how do we translate survival? Can we explore these subjects independently from a familial setting or an imaginary motherland, if there is any? Where does the understanding of the diaspora fall short in relation to a “foreign” homeland? Where does it not?

In Riz Ahmed’s words in “Where are you from”: “The question seems simple, but the answer's kinda long [...] [we] know that there's no place like home and that stretches us”.

From collectives to poets, musicians to filmmakers, painters to performers and all those navigating between disciplines, we are presenting POC artists examining multiple axis of identity. Through the exploration of historical events, community, immigration, mixed-heritage, urban development, culture, care, childhood (and more!) we want to make something worthy of our time, involvement and celebration.

This exhibition includes performances, a poetry reading and music along with permanent works.

“My tribe is a quest to a land that was lost to us, and its name is dignity” Where are you from - Riz Ahmed

Note: The title of the show is borrowed from Riz Ahmed’s short film “The Long Goodbye” (TW for racial violence and execution if you choose to watch it). In this piece he cites “Maybe I’m from everywhere and nowhere, no man’s land, between trenches nothing grows there. But it’s fertilised by the brown bodies fought for Britain in the war so when I spit a poppy grows there”.
We are exploring what can grow in a tumultuous in-between, a place of struggle but possibility and grace.