Fife Contemporary reveal participating artists in a new exhibition touring in Scotland in Autumn 2023 and throughout 2024. Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation opens at St Andrews Museum on 14 October 2023 and runs until 29 February 2024. The exhibition then opens 23 March at Kirkcaldy Galleries and runs until 12 May with plans for further touring later in the year.
The 13 Scotland based participating artists include Barbadian-Scottish visual artist Alberta Whittle who recently represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale, Zimbabwean-Scottish artist Sekai Machache who will represent Zimbabwe at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Chinese-Scottish ceramicist Viv Lee, Chinese-Scottish installation artist Rae-Yen Song and Iranian-Scottish visual artist Sara Pakdel-Cherry.
Showcasing artworks in contemporary art and craft, Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation takes its title from a continuing discourse between curator Cat Dunn and the 13 Scotland based artists featured – What does it mean to have a dual identity, and how is this sense of self reflected in work being made by Scottish craft artists today?
Li Huang – Sacred
Featuring emerging and established artists and makers the exhibition will feature works in sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles, installation, moving image films and creative writing responses. These artists showcased all in some way carry a dual identity. Many have a sense of their own self born from having a cultural heritage which is both Scottish and one which is rooted in another cultural home. The show also explores other dualisms and expressions of identity, including artists who express their, sexuality, disability, or trans and non-binary selves through their work.
As a Bajan-Scottish artist turned curator, Cat Dunn brings her unique understanding of what it means to maintain a dual-identity, the challenges that can be faced as an artist of colour, as well as the strength it can bring. Speaking ahead of the exhibition she said:
Having dual identity can be used to celebrate social identity, or it can be used as a platform to express and teach others what life can be like from another perspective.
For everyone who has embraced the term dual-identity, we do so with pride as we prefer to embrace the term than have it used against us … Each artist becomes stronger. The artworks become more dynamic. There is true joy within the artworks, along with sorrow and pain. So, the works must have all of these elements to speak.
Scotland is undergoing a cultural shift as it repositions itself in the wider world, with Scottish art at the centre of the current discourse about Scottish social Identity. Art and craft can express aspirations, values, and national character.
Sekai Machache – The Divine Sky
The selected artists are; Adil Iqbal, Alberta Whittle, Ashanti Harris, Eden Grant Dodd, Emelia Kerr Beale, Harvey Dimond, Joy Baek, Li Huang, Rae-Yen Song, Sara Pakdel Cherry, Sekai Machache, Tilda Williams Kelly and Viv Lee. Each of the artists taking part in the exhibition use layered and complex elements of craft. These create compositions that offer a unique iconography and hybridisation of references. Elements of historical and contemporary diverse cultures are evident in works exhibited.
For many of these artists their dual identity informs craft activity in their work such as Ashanti Harris’ use of mask making techniques from Caribbean Carnival culture or Adil Iqbal’s woven tapestries in collaboration with makers in Orkney and Pakistan. Zimbabwean-Scottish artist Sekai Machache references the ancient indigo dyeing processes across West Africa in her art practice. Hong Kong born Viv Lee’s unique sculptural ceramics are influenced by prehistoric cultures, modernist forms whilst working with wild Scottish clay harnessing the elemental beauty of her adopted homeland. Chinese-Scottish artist Rae-Yen Song’s work explores dual identity from a non-human perspective, allowing the artist to incorporate fantasy and fabulation. The result are puppets shaped according to the ancestral logics and imagined futures of Song’s Chinese family, which serves simultaneously as a spectacle, a memorial and a refuge. Also referencing family is the work of Korean-Scottish ceramicist Joy Baek who has borrowed the imagery of the symbolic flower, Pulsatilla Koreana (the so-called Grandmother flower), from Korean folklore that highlights the sacrifice and unconditional love of an elderly Korean mother for her daughters.
Sara Pakdel Cherry – Six Feet Under
As part of Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation, the Scottish premiere of Alberta Whittle’s film The Axe Forgets, But The Tree Remembers will be screened at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews on the 17th January. The film features the stories of the Windrush generation and their descendants. Weaving together the experiences of her own family, stories sourced from Hackney Archives and conversation with the borough’s Windrush residents, Whittle’s film highlights the animosity experienced by those who first migrated from the Caribbean to the UK.
Kate Grenyer, Director of Fife Contemporary said: “Cat Dunn has brought a thoughtful, personally reflexive, and powerful voice to the creation of this exhibition. It speaks to the deeply personal resonance that crafted work can have, as a carrier of wider cultural identities, and as a way to intercept these through personal expression. The audio recordings featured in the exhibition will have a particular resonance with many visitors as the artists share their own experiences.”
Speaking as part of the conversations series that accompanies the artworks artist Tilda Williams-Kelly said:
I think as a mixed race person, it’s hard to cement myself in any one thing and I think what I’ve always felt mostly my life is not enough of any one thing. Not Scottish enough. Not Black enough. Not White enough. Not Irish enough. Not Trinidadian enough.
I think all those things are diluted. All together they make up me and it’s taken me a long time to become proud of that. At least comfortable in who I am. So in my art, I started by drawing my family quite obsessively. I wanted to paint them beautifully and just say like, look at this person. Look at this person I love. Tell me that they’re not worth as much.
Speaking as part of the conversations series that accompanies the artworks artist Ashanti Harris said:
I was born in Guyana and then moved to the UK when I was a kid. And being Guyanese has always been a really important part of my identity, especially when we moved to the UK because it was this sort of place that my family needed to keep alive for me because it didn’t exist in my immediate surroundings. It was kept alive through food, it was kept alive through stories, and it was also kept alive through art.
If there was any kind of exhibition about the Caribbean, we would go and see it. And I would go for Afro Caribbean dance classes. And I guess just all of these different ways that you can experience a culture in a different country. For that reason, Guyana became this kind of magical place, to a certain extent that existed in the memories through other people’s and not my own lived experience, but that became mine through my imagination.
I did a lot of research about Guyanese women who we were in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. And I think that’s also this idea, to know and meet these chosen ancestors. Like you have ancestors that are yours but then your chosen ancestors are so important and a lot of the time I use my artwork to have a relationship with my chosen ancestors and to honor them in some way as well.
Fife Contemporary will also curate an associated programme of workshops and activities in collaboration with community groups and partner organisations to explore themes from the exhibition, offering a space for all to celebrate and communicate their own social, personal and cultural Identity.
Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation
14 October, – 29 February 2024,
Opening Hours 10:30am – 4:00pm Wednesday – Saturday
St Andrews Museum, Kinburn Park , Doubledykes Road, St Andrews
Alberta Whittle: The Axe Forgets, But The Tree Remembers
Followed by Alberta Whittle In Conversation
17 January 2024
6.30pm
The Byre Theatre
Abbey St, St Andrews KY16 9LA