Join us for a panel discussion between artists Ingrid Pollard and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski to discuss the documentation, preservation and representation of Black women’s and QTIPOC creativity with curator and writer Taylor Le Melle drawing from London’s recent history.

Artists Ingrid Pollard and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski discuss the documentation, preservation and representation of Black women’s and QTIPOC creativity with curator and writer Taylor Le Melle. Drawing from London’s recent history of Club Sauda, Lenthall Road Workshop, Lambeth Women’s Project, and X Marks the Spot, this event considers those collective endeavors for today’s new audiences. Varied approaches to community archiving, and the network of relationships that formulate communities around those events, will be starting points for talking about the representation of those histories now.

Ingrid Pollard (b. 1953, Guyana) is an artist and photographer. She was one of the founding members of Autograph, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Pollard was the Inaugural Stuart Hall Research Fellow (2018), and received the BATIC Artist Award (2019) and a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2019). She has been an artist-in-residence at Glasgow Women’s Library, (2019); Croydon College of Art, (2011) and Project Row Houses, Houston Texas, US, (2004). Her work has been exhibited at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2012); Victoria & Albert Museum & Photographers Gallery, London (2012); Tate Britain, London (2011); Kingsway Gallery, Goldsmiths, London (2009), and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2001).

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski is an artist, designer, archivist and organiser based between London and Minneapolis. Ahaiwe Sowinski investigates archives in relation to Black and minority ethnic histories and experiences in Britain and throughout the Diaspora, theorising and sharing her ideas on archives as spaces of therapy. Her current research focuses on the synergies between feminist, queer and (self-)archiving as curatorial and artistic practice. She has recently presented works at WARM, Minneapolis (2016); Patrick’s Cabinet, Minneapolis (2017), Vienna Fine Arts Academy (2019); and University of the Arts London (2019).

Taylor Le Melle (b. 1988, USA) is a curator and writer. They especially gravitate towards stories that employ the trope of a dead or otherwise absent main character. They co-direct not/nowhere, an artist workers’ cooperative with Imran Perretta, Rhea Storr and Jennifer Martin, and also publish books for PSS. Le Melle’s most recent project Technical-Adjacent with Ima-Abasi Okon, was on display at Turf Projects in Croydon (2020).