In their own filmmaking practice, Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah are committed to exploring race, migration, and environmental legacies of colonialism. Their films span documentary, fiction, and artist film with a focus on collective and collaborative filmmaking practices and intuitive, responsive modes of working. The London-based filmmaking duo have exhibited their work at LUX London, Humber Street Gallery, Wellcome Trust, Brent Biennial ‘22 and the National Gallery of Art in the US.
And Still, It Remains
And Still, It Remains (2023, 30m) tells the story of Mertoutek, a village nestled in the Hoggar Mountains of Algeria’s Southern Sahara and home to the Escamaran community of Black Algerians. Surrounded by ancient rock art, the area was also a testing ground for French nuclear weaponry between 1961-66 and continues to suffer the dire consequences of radioactive fallout circulating in the water and soil. Juxtaposed with slow meditative shots of the mountains, Escamaran migration history, ways of life, ancient rock art, experiences of French nuclear experiments, faith and spirituality are narrated by the voices of multiple residents. By affording the residents distance from the lens, and summoning the landscape as a witness and protagonist, the film pushes against forms of visual capture that reproduce a colonial gaze and challenges visibility as the currency for political redress. Winds migrating across the Sahara have recently carried sand containing nuclear remains back to France - a reminder that the environmental afterlives of colonialism cannot be contained or forgotten. In light of these living legacies, Arwa and Turab throw into sharp relief the racial oversight in the ‘end of the world’ discourse by asking what worlds have already ended and what does a life after the end of the world look like? What does intimacy with toxic colonialism afford its survivors and how does it shape their ideas around justice? How does one recover from ongoing violence and how, ultimately, do you carry on?
This film was exhibited at LUX gallery from 8 September, 2023 – 14 October, 202; Thursday – Sunday, 12 – 5pm
A special thanks goes to the residents of Mertoutek for their time and generosity including Amghar, Hajj Ali, Hajja Fatima, Kheera, Kulsom, Mariam, Zainab, Hajj Aflan, and Hajj Mohammed Fnufnu. For their support, we’d also like to thank Samia Henni, Jack Rennick Welsh, and Benjamin Cook.
And Still, It Remains is commissioned by Liverpool Arab Arts Festival.
Supported using funds from Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust.
With thanks to LUX.
I Carry It With Me Everywhere
Informed by interviews with first-generation migrants living in the borough and beyond, I Carry It With Me Everywhere (2022, 19m) weaves together the lives of multiple characters as they confront inherited ideas of belonging. From the severed connection to a motherland following the death of a parent, to the generational experience of displacement, or the feeling of nostalgia for a place and time forever out of reach, the film explores how migration results in moments of rupture from which new understandings of home and belonging may emerge.
The film was exhibited as part of the Brent Biennial 20222.
The Guardian reviewed the Brent Biennial and our work:
“Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah’s beautifully shot film I Carry It With Me Everywhere explores the complex webs of duty, danger, belonging and family ties that keep migrants suspended between two worlds. A totemic work of this biennial, it is locally made by film-makers who run a youth programme.”
Barby Asante’s Declaration of Independence
A short film commissioned by Art on the Underground
Declaration of Independence is Barby Asante’s commission for Art on the Underground; a new iteration of Asante’s performative artwork in collaboration with workers at Transport for London. This brings together a group of Black and POC women and non-binary peole into a space for conversation, writing, collective thinking, ritual and re-enactment towards a collective public performace. Declaration of Independence launched in September 2023 with a collective performance at Stratford Tube station.
This work draws on research into the Tfl photography archives connecting histories of black and non-white women workers to our current moment to reflect on how histories also inform the present. These archive images also form part of three large-scale visual artworks that have been installed at Stratford, Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Green Tube stations, in which the images are placed in dialogue with words from the ‘Declaration’. Produced on vinyl, these pieces will be set within brightly coloured interconnected shapes and lines, forming new speculative constellations and communicating ideas about histories and futures in a collective voice. Central to this artwork is the development of ways to create and occupy space; installed within touching distance alongside station escalators, and above the Stratford Tube station ticket hall, the previously personal and intimate ‘Declaration’ is propelled onto the public stage.
Rhea Storr’s Uncommon Observations
A short film commissioned by Art on the Underground
Photos credit, Thierry Bal
Uncommon Observations: The Ground That Moves Us is Rhea Storr's ambitious multi-site artwork, presented as a series of large-scale captioned photographs exploring surveillance and the creation/circulation of image of Black subjects. The work was launched in July 2022 and exhibited for a year across four London Underground stations: Stratford, Bethnal Green, Notting Hill Gate and Heathrow Terminal 4.
It was an immense privilege to work with the talented and deeply thoughtful artist Rhea Storr to document the making of this project on behalf of Art On the Underground. Storr’s work was created using an outdated military surveillance photographic film called aerochrome, once used for monitoring and control and now used with experimental openness. This film turns reflections of infra-red light into vivid shades of red and pink and in contrast centres bodies, drawing focus to human movement. The images were produced during a photoshoot with artist Jade Blackstock and staged in spaces of common land across London. Through this sequence of photographic artworks, Storr asks how can an image share knowledge? How might it be a call to come together as a community? How can an image challenge or confront its audience? Can it be a projection of joy and liberation?
Larry Achiampong’s Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers' Alliance (Union)
A short film commissioned by Art on the UndergroundPhotos credit, Thierry Bal
Larry Achiampong’s artwork re-imagines the iconic London Underground roundel logo which for more than 100 years has been both a navigation tool and an instantly recognisable symbol for Lodon. Achiampong’s version relaces the traditional red and blue design with Pan Africn colours taht speak symbolically to African diasporic identities while also acknowledging their contributions and present in London. He incorporates 54 stars arranged around the edge fo the roundel, representting each of the 54 countries of the African continent joined in union.
In developing this work, Achiampong was inspired by Adinkra, a Ghanian system of symbols by the Akan people to convey shorts concepts and proverbs that relate to everyday life and the environment. The new roundel will remain permanently installed above the main entrance to the station on Westminster Bridge Road, enlarged and rendered in vibrant vitreous enamel and paint metal colours.