belle hooks
belle hooks' work has been pivotal to my understanding of intersectionality. It is mainly her work that has helped me to interpret my own experiences. And though I may be focussing more on trying to understand neurodiverse experiences at the moment, I would not know how to engage with them in neurotypical systems if it had not been for hooks and other feminist writers like her.
Letter to My Daughter Book by Maya Angelou
This book played a crucial role in introducing me to the idea that specific identities could lead to specific experiences. It is one of the reasons I began to try an understand the relationship between identity and experience. In the book, Maya Angelou tells us though she does not actually have a daughter, she felt the need to write the book almost as a warning to younger black women, who might use her experiences to guide their own.
Skye Arundhati Thomas
Skye Arundhati Thomas' essay 'Best Export Quality' (Honey I'm Home, RCA, 2016) has helped me engage with my identity as an Indian and a South Asian woman, both at home and abroad. Her essay made me question what it might mean to decolonise our identities, and whether that is possible at all, given how our colonial history has shaped so many of the structures that define Indian lives now.
Sonia Boyce
In Stage 2 of this project, I explain how I took inspiration (and courage) from Sonia Boyce's current practice – and followed a line of enquiry through without knowing what might come off it. Other than that, I find her earlier paintings and 2D work very compelling as they also speak to the specific experiences of a black woman and an artist in the UK. The works helped me to understand how the same identity could take on different forms based on what context it finds itself in.
Renee Odjidja
Renee has been mentoring me for the Fellowship and her guidance has been invaluable especially with regard to the workshop in Stage 2. Through her curatorial practice and her commitment to decolonisation, she has introduced me to a number of artists of colour who grapple with identity in various ways. Some of them have been through the Perspective Lecture series that she organised at UAL in UNIT 1.
Georgina Bednar
Georgina is an artist and facilitator and founder of 'NO Ordinary Experience' – a company working across theatre and other various art forms. Her skills as a facilitator are fantastic and I studied them closely throughout the time we spent at the Fellowship, finding ways in which I could adapt it to my own practice. Particularly, I was inspired by her ability to engage audiences at the end of a long day, as most meetings were in the evening.
Helen Starr
Helen is one of my mentors for the Fellowship and her advice has been very helpful for my overall practice. She works closely with Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley and was one of the people who helped install She Keeps Me Damn Alive at Artebyte. Particularly, Helen's advice on how to design interaction online has been very helpful, especially in terms of how I think about Maze's future as an interactive work.