POSTPONED Community archiving with Meera Shakti Osborne

Description

A workshop by the Ambivalent Archives research network

Unfortunately, this event has been postponed. Apologies for any inconvenience .

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Speaker

Meera Shakti Osborne (Artist)

Abstract

Meera Shakti Osborne is an art practitioner and youth worker from London. Meera’s work focuses on collective healing through creative self-expression. Their practice engages with accessibility and confidence building in both formal education settings and casual encounters. In recent years Meera has focused on questions around history making, the ethics of collaboration and processes that allow for flexing, glitches and love.

Meera is currently a LOEWE Foundation/Studio Voltaire resident artist and Research Associate 2023/24 at Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva). They have an upcoming solo exhibition at PEER Gallery (2024) and a painting series at the inaugural exhibition at the Women’s Museum in Barking, opening March 2024. Recent exhibitions include Department of Unruly History, Cubitt Gallery (2023). Meera has worked with Nottingham Contemporary, iniva, Newbridge Project, Peckham Platform, Focal Point Gallery, The Gap Arts Project, The Drawing Room, Reprezent FM and is a visiting lecturer at UAL. Meera graduated in Design at Central School of Speech and Drama in 2015 and Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Science in 2018.

At Ambivalent Archives, Meera will discuss and invite us into their process, particularly behind their ‘Department of Unruly Histories’ (DUH) Project. This audio visual art project consists of a historical archive of people’s unique and often-untold stories in London. It is a multi-part series, working with a range of diasporic communities and individuals across London. Participants choose which histories they would like to record, and together with Meera create sound pieces and visual publications which range from conversational to experimental. As Meera writes, “archives are, by their nature, unruly–a quality that duh encourages throughout the process”.

We encourage you to listen to a selection from the following audio pieces from the Unruly Histories archive, which Meera has shared with us:

• Zines, Scenes, Squats, Anti-racism, Gender Everything and the Kitchen Table: Queer Culinary Community Conversions in the 2000s by Raju Rage
• Tales and reminiscences, by Gayatri Thanki, Swati and B.L.
• Performance, Personality, A Portrait, by Jordan Minga, in conversation with Larena Amin and Meera.

Photo credit for the portrait of Meera Shakti Osborne: © Bernice Mulenga

For enquiries please contact the Research Networks Programme Manager.