EMPIRE LINES

Interdisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada crafts stories of working-class migration experiences, unwrapping the influence of his mother and many other textile makers in his diaspora community in Birmingham.

From large-scale textile works to prints and drawings, Osman Yousefzada’s practice considers representations and reimaginings of working class migration experience. Growing up in a British-Pakistani diaspora community in Birmingham in the 1980s, Yousefzada’s craft is grounded in his childhood experiences, watching his mother, ‘a maker’ of shalwar kameez and other textiles.

A new exhibition at Charleston in Firle draws connections between these domestic, private spaces, the Bloomsbury group and fashion, and the artist’s public practice. We look at a new series of works on paper, on public display for the first time, inspired by characters in the Falnama, a book of omens used by fortune tellers in Iran, India and Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries. At the time, people seeking insight into the future would turn to a random page and interpret the text; Yousefzada transposes this to the present day, to tell stories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants, and recreate such talismans that protect or heal and work as guardians of the immigrant experience.

The artist describes his large-scale textile series, Queer Feet, Afghan rugs, topped with ceramic works, and embroidered with found objects that reference Islamic and Asian design histories. We discuss his expanded, Sufistic, spiritual practice. We also consider the healing potential of museums, and the various media used by the artist in storytelling, with his book, The Go-Between (2022).

For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/osman-yousefzada-at-charleston-in-firle

For more about the material power of embroidery, listen to curator Rachel Dedman on an UNRWA Dress from Ramallah, Palestine (1930s) at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and the Whitworth in Manchester, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/92c34d07be80fe43a8e328705a7d80cb

WITH: Osman Yousefzada, interdisciplinary artist and research practitioner at the Royal College of Art, London. He is a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, and Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at the Birmingham School of Art. His first book, The Go-Between (2022), is published by Canongate. Alongside his solo exhibition at Charleston, he exhibits in group exhibitions including Embodiments of Memory at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and Design Museum’s REBEL, and his Migrant Godx can be found at Claridge’s Art Space, Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery, and soon, Camden Art Centre, as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. He will exhibit at the 60th Venice Biennale, and the V&A in London, in 2024.

ART: ‘Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023)’.

SOUNDS: ‘Home Grown - Osman Yousefzada x Selfridges’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Curators Hannah Hooks and Misha Curson connect global environments and food practices, from guerrilla gardeners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to foragers in Palestine, challenging extractive, colonial approaches to land through contemporary art at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Artemisia afra – or African wormwood – is traditionally used as a medicine to prevent and treat malaria. This knowledge has long been passed down through generations and communities via music and craft, both marginalised in Western rational thought. In the 1970s, research to develop new anti-malarial drugs led to the discovery, extraction, and patenting of Artemisin - already used for two thousand years in China and Asia. Whilst still cultivated by some women’s cooperatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the plant, and its producers, have been continually suppressed and banned, by the Belgian colonial administration in the 19th century, to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Big Pharma businesses.

With a multimedia installation of film, song, and tea tastings, Swiss artist Uriel Orlow seeks to platform these ongoing practices. He joins other contemporary artists in Acts of Gathering, a new exhibition at the Eden Project in Cornwall which explores how our relationship with food is linked with the land, environment, and labour that goes into its production. Harvest festivals in Homowo in Ghana and Guldize in Cornwall link the different practices of Serge Attukwei Clottey and Jonathan Baldock. Meanwhile, in Jumana Manna’s film FORAGERS (2022), we see how Israeli nature protection laws prohibit the foraging of native plants, alienating Palestinians from their land, and sustainable harvesting practices.

Curators Misha Curson and Hannah Hooks connect traditions across cultures, acknowledging how human and planetary health are also entwined. We discuss legacies of extraction in science, botany, and renewed mining in Africa. Misha and Hannah suggest why some local methods are classed (and commodified) as sustainable, while others are marginalised by globalisation, industrial farming, and neoimperial hierarchies. Plus, we discuss the opportunities Eden presents for public participation, access, and activation as a non-conventional museum space, its position within the wider arts ecology of south-west England, and its own regeneration, as a former clay mine.

Acts of Gathering runs at the Eden Project in Cornwall until 14 April 2024.

For more, join EMPIRE LINES in conversation with artist Serge Attukwei Clottey at Reclaim - a weekend of talks and events at Eden, curated to support mental and planetary wellbeing - which takes place from 27-28 January 2024: edenproject.com/visit/whats-on/reclaim

For more about the arts ecology of south-west England, hear curator Ashish Ghadiali on Radical Ecology’s recent exhibition at KARST in Plymouth, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/146d4463adf0990219f1bf0480b816d3

And Morad Montazami, curator of the Casablanca Art School (1962-1987), currently at Tate St Ives in Cornwall: pod.link/1533637675/episode/db94bc51e697400326f308f6c6eaa3c6

For more on music, memory, and history, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7

And on the globalisation of 'African' masks, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410

WITH: Misha Curson and Hannah Hooks, Senior Arts Curator and Arts Curator at the Eden Project, Cornwall.

ART: ‘Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020)’.

SOUNDS: Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Curator Matthew Barrington marks 220 years since the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave uprising, unreeling how resistance continues with a series of films, from the first zombie horrors, to contemporary Caribbean and diasporic documentaries.

The Caribbean island of Haiti is often reduced to binary representations, of the 18th century Haitian Revolution and its iconic leader, Toussaint Louverture, or environmental disasters, with the earthquake of 2010. But resistance has long been central to Haitian identities and the popular imagination - past and present. Since 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived on Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all attempted to ‘settle’ the land. The Revolution was the first and only successful uprising of self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in the island region of Saint-Domingue, a rebellion that still resounds across the islands and diasporas today - whether in the words of Naomi Osaka, or filmmakers like Esery Mondesir, who say ‘we’ve been screaming Black Lives Matter (#BLM) for over 200 years’.

Marking 220 years since the Revolution, and formation of the first independent Black republic on 1 January 1804, Barbican Cinema curator Matthew Barrington shares some of the ways Haiti is depicted on screen. We cover 70 years of films, travelling from ‘exotic’ plantations to more everyday scenes, starting with Victor Halperin’s White Zombie (1932), which birthed the horror genre. Drawing on Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of factory owner Murder Legendre, and own othering, we discuss how such movies often sensationalised local spiritual practices as ‘superstitions’, and reinforced racial and gender hierarchies with their Western European-centric gaze. But they can also be read more subversively, in relation to colonialism, as evidence of forced labour, slavery, and capitalist extraction. We find similar tropes in gothic and body horrors, from vampires to killer plants, and connect with post-colonial landscapes across the Caribbean like Cuba.

Contemporary filmmakers also grapple with the ‘ghosts’ of colonialism and capitalism. Matthew explains how the continued extraction of wealth from the islands, many of which were forced to pay reparations to their former enslavers, has perpetuated political instability, forcing many into exile or to migrate for economic opportunities. He shares classic films by Raoul Peck and Arnold Antonin, connecting with Third Cinema, and more experimental works by award-winning makers like Miryam Charles and Gessica Généus. Exploring the occupation and ongoing intervention by the US, and the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier in the 1970s and 1980s, we see how the distance of diasporas often creates the conditions for rebellion, protest, and radical community-building today, as well as pluralising perspectives of well-known landscapes, like New York City. Finally, we discuss the importance of art, visual culture, and Carnival in the context of this ongoing underdevelopment and high illiteracy rates in Haiti, and how public institutions like the National Portrait Gallery will mark this vital anniversary.

WITH: Matthew Barrington, film curator and researcher. Matthew is the Manager of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image in London, a programmer for the Essay Film Festival and the London Korean Film Festival, and has worked with the Open City Documentary Festival. He is also a curator of cinema at the Barbican Centre, including the series, Visions of Haiti.

ART: ‘White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Photographer Armet Francis documents African diasporic cultures across ‘The Black Triangle’, and captures the co-founding of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP, 35 years ago.

For over four decades, Jamaican-British photographer Armet Francis has taken portraits that celebrate the resilience and survival of African diasporic cultures. Having immigrated with his family as a young child in the 1950s, he was part of the post-Windrush generation, acutely aware of his ‘cultural displacement’ and ‘political alienation’ as the only Black child in his school in London Docklands. Drawing on the transatlantic slave trade route, between Africa, the Americas, and Europe, Armet developed the idea of ‘The Black Triangle’ to guide his photographic practice from 1969, as a means to connect with the rich and diverse pan-African communities.

Armet details his ‘social documentary’ approach, his experiences as one of the first Black photographers to shoot fashion, and how he challenged exotic tropes in commercial, white photography and advertising. He shares images of Notting Hill Carnival, Brixton Market, and tributes to those who protested the injustice of the New Cross Fire in 1981. Armet retells the unlikely story of taking Angela Davis’ photograph at the Keskidee Centre, his engagement with activists like Malcolm X and Stuart Hall, and how he had to ‘become Black’ before he could becoming politically conscious and active in civil rights movements.

Armet was also the first Black photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in London when The Black Triangle series was exhibited there in 1983. Five years later, he co-founded the Association of Black Photographers, now Autograph ABP, where he has represented the series in 2023. To mark both anniversaries, he talks about what it was like founding the institution, working with the likes of David A Bailey, Mark Sealy, and Charlie Phillips, and his ongoing practice in the archives, keeping record of the important contributions - and canons - of British history.

Armet Francis: Beyond The Black Triangle runs at Autograph ABP in London until 20 January 2024.

Hear from many more artists and photographers who’ve worked with Autograph on EMPIRE LINES:

Ingrid Pollard on Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at Turner Contemporary in Margate: pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4

Curator Florence Ostende on Carrie Mae Weems’ series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–1996), at the Barbican in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da

And curator Alice Wilke on Carrie Mae Weems’ Africa Series (1993), at the Kunstmuseum Basel: pod.link/1533637675/episode/d63af25b239253878ec68180cd8e5880

Johny Pitts on Home is Not a Place (2021-Now) at The Photographers’ Gallery in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/70fd7f9adfd2e5e30b91dc77ee811613

John Akomfrah on Arcadia (2023) at The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/31cdf80a5d524e4f369140ef3283a6cd

For more from Autograph’s contemporary programme, hear photographer Hélène Amouzou and curator Bindi Vora on Voyages (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a97c0ce53756ecaac99ffd0c24f8a870

WITH: Armet Francis, Jamaican-British photographer. He is a co-founder of the Association of Black Photographers in London, now Autograph ABP.

ART: ‘The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

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Writer and musician Kalaf Epalanga moves between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil, sounding out colonial histories and contemporary migrant experiences through kizomba and kuduro music, in Whites Can Dance Too (2023).

‘It took being caught at a border without proper documents for me to realise I'd always been a prisoner of sorts.’ Kalaf Epalanga’s debut novel follows a young man migrating from Africa to Western Europe, when he is suddenly stopped on his journey and demanded his papers by the immigration police. Finding work in various jobs, he does soon find community - and freedom - in the dance clubs of the cities.

Whites Can Dance Too is an invitation to ‘embrace the other’ and it's also a form of auto-fiction. Kalaf migrated from Angola to Portugal, the former a colony, known as Portuguese West Africa until 1951, which remained a province and state of the Portuguese Empire until 1975. First publishing in Portuguese, Kalaf details the legacies of this colonisation in contemporary culture, taking from the Latin tradition of writing the stream of consciousness, and challenging Anglophone standards with oral storytelling. Kalaf also talks about his relationship with translation - and why the English language edition is his favourite.

Drawing on his background in electronic dance music, Kalaf relocates techno on the African continent, combining elements of the traditional African zouk and contemporary kuduro genres to design kizomba, or dance parties. We talk about sound as a vibration - a migration - which can articulate emotions and memories beyond words, and why curating exhibitions or DJ sets is a form of storytelling too. Traveling across continents, he shares some of his literary inspirations, from Ondjaki to Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and how he has connected with Afro-Brazilians since working in South America. We also discuss the relationship between diasporas in the Global South, and the importance of supporting cultural and literary industries.

Whites Can Dance Too by Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn, is published by Faber, and available in all good bookshops and online. You can find Kalaf’s book playlist here, and the Kizomba Design Museum playlists here.

For more artists practicing between Angola and Portugal, listen to Osei Bonsu, curator of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, on Edson Chagas’ Tipo Passe series (2014) on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410

WITH: Kalaf Epalanga, Angolan musician and writer. Now based in Berlin, Germany, he is a celebrated columnist in Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. He fronted the Lisbon-based electronic dance collective Buraka Som Sistema, and founded the Kizomba Design Museum, which launched at the São Paulo Biennial 2023. He was also co-curator of Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library in London. Whites Can Dance Too is his debut novel.

ART: ‘Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Contemporary artist Maha Ahmed reconnects Asian art forms along the Silk Road, migrating between traditional Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, and imported Islamic ceramics.

Where Worlds Meet captures both Maha Ahmed’s practice and life. Born in 1989 in Pakistan, she first studied Miniature Painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore from Imran Qureshi, pursuing her practice in that city, and also London, Tokyo, and Dubai, where she is currently based. Ahmed’s detailed paintings relate to her own migrations, each one populated with one or two birds in flight. Over time, her titles have shifted, from references to noise, towards solitude, emptiness, and meeting ‘a wall at every turn’. Ahmed speaks about her experience of isolation in Japan, and the loneliness shared by many during COVID lockdowns. But she also shares how Japan offered her many meeting points in her artistic journey, as displayed in her Leighton House exhibition.

Maha’s miniatures draw from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts, and classical Japanese forms. Though historically-informed, her application of colour is wholly contemporary, with rich greens and blues lent from her time working at an illustration studio in Tokyo. She talks about about artistic exchanges between Asia and East Asia, and how woodblock prints, pigments, and dyes were often traded along the Silk Road, inspiring interdisciplinary and multimedia artworks. These are cultural histories which decentre and exclude Western Europe entirely, often absent in the art historical canon.

The artist also combines historic and contemporary media; some are aged, with paint layered atop tea and coffee-stained paper, and some are stark and modern. She links back to London with ‘An Unfolding’ (2023), a work specially commissioned for Leighton House, which references the importance of colour in ‘non-representational’ art. Ahmed also details how she draws from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and how, as a Muslim, she feels ‘comfortable appropriating’ the colours of its 18th century Arab Hall, adorned with vivid ceramic tiles from Turkey and Greece, Egypt and Syria.

Maha Ahmed: Where Worlds Meet runs at Leighton House in London until 3 March 2024.For more, you can read my article in recessed.space: recessed.space/00156-Maha-Ahmed-Leighton-House

For more about Oneness (2022) at Leighton House, hear artist Shahrzad Ghaffari on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/a8cb557e566005623d9ad59e8e0a3340

For more about Imran Qureshi, listen to Hammad Nasar in the EMPIRE LINES episode on Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009): pod.link/1533637675/episode/f6e05083a7ee933e33f15628b5f0f209

And read more about the exhibition, Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, at MK Gallery and The Box, in my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery

WITH: Maha Ahmed, contemporary artist, whose works draw inspiration from traditional Persian and Mughal manuscripts and classical Japanese painting techniques. She has lived and worked in Lahore, London, and Tokyo, and is currently based in Dubai. She is represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London, and Galerie Isa in Dubai.

ART: ‘Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023)’.

EDITOR: Luke Matthews.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth to Sharjah and Venice.

Artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah talks about his intersectional, environmentally-engaged films, comparing previous works like Purple (2017) to this first ‘post-human project’. He connects historic viruses - often represented by Indigenous cultures in vivid oral and visual sources like Aztec codexes and ‘plague journals’ - with his experience producing during the COVID pandemic. Drawing on his work with the Black Audio Film Collective, John shares his collaborative, ‘democratic’ approach to filmmaking. And, 400 years since the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth to transport the Pilgrims to North America, we discuss the meaning of Arcadia’s immersive cinematic display for the port city today.

John Akomfrah: Arcadia runs at The Box in Plymouth runs at The Box in Plymouth until 2 June 2024. He will represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale 2024⁠ in Italy from 20 April to 24 November 2024.

For more on water and migration on film, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7

For more on sublime landscapes, listen to photographer David Sanya on the EMPIRE LINES episode about Lagos Soundscapes, Emeka Ogboh (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d

WITH: Sir John Akomfrah CBE RA, British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), and now Smoking Dogs Films, with works including The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work recently on display at Tate Britain. Arcadia (2023), which premiered at the Sharjah Biennial 15 in the United Arab Emirates, is co-commissioned by The Box, Plymouth, Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

ART: ‘Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Curator Alice Wilke transports from Switzerland to sub-Saharan cities in Africa, tracing Carnival traditions across continents, via Carrie Mae Weems’ 20th century wallpapers, ceramic plates, and photographs.

In 1993, the North American artist Carrie Mae Weems undertook a ‘pilgrimage’ to West Africa to discover her heritage. With photographs of historic architectures, former slave sites, and colonies, she seeks to retell histories about the origins of civilisation - but ones which also highlight her position as a contemporary artist practicing from a diaspora.

As The Evidence of Things Not Seen - the final stop on Weems’ current ‘world tour’ of exhibitions - opens in Switzerland, curator Alice Wilke talks about how the show has changed from between the Barbican, in London, and Basel. Starting with the Missing Link series (2003), we consider the particular history of Carnival in Basel, a time of social and political critique, and tradition with unexpected connections to the Caribbean. We see how Weems relocates celebrated - and celebrity - Black women like Mary J. Blige in her practice, composing photographs like Baroque paintings to play on conventions of Western/European art, and keep stories alive through their retelling. Moving through Weems’ wider work, we consider the racism, internalised shadism, and hyper-visibility of Black people in society, and what European institutions haven’t yet seen, in their under-representation of POC artists.

Carrie Mae Weems. The Evidence of Things Not Seen runs at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland until 7 April 2024.

For more, you can read my article in Shade Art Review: shadepodcast.substack.com/p/jelena-sofronijevic-revisits-carriePart of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.

Return to Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now at the Barbican in London, with curator Florence Ostende’s EMPIRE LINES episode on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-1996): pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da

For more about Weems’ wallpapers, read about BLACK VENUS: Reclaiming Black Women in Visual Culture at Somerset House, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house

For more about Dogon architecture in Africa, listen to Dr. Peter Clericuzio’s episode on The Great Mosque(s) of Djenné, Mali, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/079e9ccf333c54e7116ce0f9a6e7a70c

WITH: Alice Wilke, assistant curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. She has worked as a research assistant at the city’s HGK FHNW Art Institute, where she supervised the podcast series Promise No Promises!, the Kunsthalle Göppingen, and the Museum Tinguely. She is the assistant curator of The Evidence of Things Not Seen, with curator Maja Wismer.

ART: ‘Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Curator Hammad Nasar expands ideas of miniature painting, moving around South Asia and Western Europe from the 17th century to now, with Nusra Latif Qureshi’s 2009 digital print scroll, Did You Come Here To Find History?

Beyond the Page, a touring exhibition of South Asian miniatures, is truly historic and historical. At its core are more than 180 detailed, small-scale works on paper, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the time when the Mughal Empire ruled over much of South Asia. But these miniature paintings are borrowed not from contemporary India or Pakistan, but the British Museum in London, the Tate and V&A, and the Royal Collection. So how did this wealth of South Asian miniature paintings come to be held (and hidden away) in Britain’s greatest collections – and what does it mean for this sheer quantity to be here now?

Hammad Nasar, one of the exhibition’s curators, puts these works in conversation with those by leading contemporary artists from South Asia and its diasporas, including Hamra Abbas, Imran Qureshi, Shahzia Sikander, Khadim Ali, and Ali Kazim. We consider their practice across media, highlighting the different forms in which miniature practice lives and lives on, whether in sculpture, film, or architectural installations. Travelling along Nusra Latif Qureshi’s digital-printed scroll, we unpick the layers of portraits, from contemporary passport photographs, to traditional portraits from Venice and Mughal India. With a miniature painting of Saint Rabia, the first female saint in Sufi Islam, Hammad also highlights how women and the body have been represented in Islamic cultures, pluralising perspectives on the past.

Connecting Britain and South Asia, we consider the foundation of the world-renowned Miniature Department of the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan, and how artists have long engaged with a range of non-Western/European media, including Japanese woodblock prints. Hammad defies the marginalisation of miniatures – due to their size, and ‘non-conventional’ means of distribution and display – suggesting that art markets and institutions must ‘grow up’ in their appreciation of the media. We also trace migrations and two-way flows, how courtly and Company paintings influenced well-known Dutch Masters like Rembrandt, to Anwar Jalal Shemza, a multidisciplinary artist of modernist and abstract works. Plus, Hammad talks about the ‘empire-shaped hole’ in British history, and why it is important that we share uncomfortable histories like the legacy of the East India Company to challenge the displacement of empire, as something that happened over there and then.

‍Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now runs at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes until 28 January 2024, then The Box in Plymouth in 2024.

For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/small-and-mighty-south-asian-miniature-painting-and-britain-1600-to-now-at-mk-gallery.

Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.

WITH: Hammad Nasar, curator, writer and researcher. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, where he co-leads the London, Asia Programme, and co-curator of the British Art Show 9 (2020–2022). He is the co-curator of Beyond the Page, an exhibition supported by the Bagri Foundation.

ART: ‘Did You Come Here To Find History?, Nusra Latif Qureshi (2009)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

Follow EMPIRE LINES on Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast

And Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Photographer Hélène Amouzou, and curator Bindi Vora, capture the in/visibility of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, moving between 21st century Togo and Belgium in a series of haunting autoportraits.

Born in Togo, and now based in Belgium, Hélène Amouzou’s self-portraits consider how migration has shaped her identity. Her blurred, ghostly figure, set against suitcases, and the peeling wallpaper of a destitute attic, suggests at the sense of in/visibility, and the particular experiences of women trapped in domestic spaces. These photographs, created during a period where she was seeking political asylum, have become documents of her family’s two-decade long journey seeking safety and citizenship during the 1990s and 2000s.

As the artist’s first exhibition in the UK opens at Autograph, she details her practice, and use of long exposures and sweeping motions to suggest continuities between past and present. Hélène shares Togo’s perspectives on northern European countries, as informed by colonial histories and myths. Togoland was a ‘protectorate’ of the German Empire in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, an area which included the current state of Togo and much of Ghana, and which Europeans had long dubbed ‘the Slave Coast’. During the First World War, it was invaded by British and French forces, and endured military rule by the latter until its independence in 1960. She likens Belgium’s location - similarly placed between France and Germany - whilst curator Bindi Vora connects with her own family’s experiences of displacement, herself a second-generation Ugandan-Asian migrant with connections to both Kenya and India. Plus, we discuss the impact of this public exhibition on Hélène’s private, intimate practice, and what it means to display these works in the context of the British media discourse about ‘migrant crises’.

Hélène Amouzou: Voyages runs at Autograph in London until 20 January 2024.

Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.

For more on Nil Yalter, hear the artist on Exile is a Hard Job (1974-Now) at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/36b8c7d8d613b78262e54e38ac62e70f

WITH: Hélène Amouzou, Togo-born and Belgium-based photographer. Bindi Vora, British-Indian interdisciplinary photographic artist, and curator at Autograph. Her first book is Mountain of Salt (2023), based on a 2020-2021 series of the same name.

ART: ‘Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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