Could you explain what drew you towards collection 1.0067 and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?
I was instantly drawn to the children’s booklet for a few reasons – an ongoing investigation into child’s play in my practice, an interest in alternative education, de-schooling, and my own memories of being at primary school in the 1980s when the booklet was made.
I began this project by studying the booklet, translating the text as much as I could, but mainly studying the children’s drawings – reading them like a story of their experience of being in Nigeria as a child expat.
At the same time I interviewed former child expats, and people who had a strong connection with another country as a child, whether they had lived there or not. I gathered childhood stories, vivid and fragmented memories, comforting recipes etc.
Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?
My work is inspired by modernist architecture from the 1950s onwards – especially social housing and playground design, so I often refer to historical records – architectural plans, old photographs of buildings, etc. I have worked more directly with archival material for a project called Make Use, whereI collected booklets, photographs, poetry and documents to do with alternative living in the 1970s in a particular area of London. I then displayed the findings as an open resource during a residency in a local library, and for an artist-led walk, where some of the poetry was performed by the original poet. It was important and insightful to work with the archival material, especially the material that was gifted to me by former squatters and original authors. Most of the documents were photocopied booklets and DIY manuals, which would have been passed around within the squatting communities in the 1970s, but are still full of useful knowledge that relates to our current housing crisis today. It’s the intergenerational knowledge exchange that fascinated me during this project, and the sharing of the archival material was at the core of that exchange.
In your previous works, you have been concerned with ideas of community, collectives and the politics of seemingly innocent places of play and social gathering. How did these ideas feature, if at all, in the development of your project?
Playgrounds are political spaces. Play is supposed to be purely spontaneous and pleasurable, and on the child’s terms, but playgrounds are generally designed to achieve certain social, political and educational goals set by others. The adventure playground movement set out to change this but is under constant threat by property developers and councils, etc. I am interested in looking beyond these seemingly innocent places of play, as there are often underlying struggles, and this is what came up a lot while studying the children’s drawings. I could not help but think about the potential inequality, privilege, exploitation, and the political unrest going on in Nigeria at the time, and the children being part of this but not fully understanding. A former child expat I interviewed recalled her experience of this:
Though we were always confronted with gaping inequalities while we lived in Africa, this experience was the most extreme – being escorted out of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history while Rwandans were left to be murdered. We were taken to nearby Kenya and temporarily housed in a newly built five-star hotel in Nairobi with a swimming pool on the roof. We flinched when doors slammed, reminded of gunfire. We went on a luxury safari; I turned 10 at a hotel on the beach near Mombasa.
Your final work, Petrichor, is a large hanging piece of printed calico. Could you explain the meaning of the title and how the work was made?
Petrichor means the smell of rain after it falls onto dry soil. I chose this title because in the interviews when I asked people about what triggered their childhood memories of place: sound and scent were very important. A former child expat who lived in several African countries talked about how the smell of rain in summer always reminds her of living in Africa, and this resonated with me as a powerful trigger for a moment of contemplation after the storm.
The work was created by extracting elements of the children’s drawings from the booklet, for example hut structures, fish-like creatures, weather symbols and other architectural forms; carving repetitive patterns into the linocut shapes; and then hand-printing them onto calico fabric.
In your blog post, Triggers, you discuss the importance of sound and particularly the sound of rain. Could you expand on this in relation to your practice as a whole?
After hearing that the sound and smell of rain were both powerful triggers of memories, I started to notice that nearly every page in the booklet depicted the weather – rain, storm, lighting, bright sun, and ceiling fans cooling the hot heat. The visceral environment seemed to be important for the children to represent in their drawings.
I have not really worked with sound in my practice before but I began recording the heavy rain on the roof while making the fabric work, and then decided to record playground sounds. It was just part of the process of understanding the child’s experience, and helping to imagine the places of play and social gathering from the drawings.
Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?
I have enjoyed learning from the children’s drawings and would like to work more directly with children to help understand wider political and social issues, through workshops and collaborative projects.