Oct

The Future is a Collective Project - Davinia-Ann Robinson

Actions and Detail Panel

Sales Ended

Event description

People of colour are invited to explore relationships to their body, connections to their environments and ways to heal colonial violence

About this Event

The Future is a Collective Project : Davinia-Ann Robinson

The Future is a Collective Project is a collaborative research group open to anyone interested in exploring the question ‘Are we carrying the right tools to shape the future we want and need?'

In this workshop, artist Davinia-Ann Robinson invites People of Colour to join in an exploration of her current work and research exploring ways in which bodies of colour are able to enact presencing - feeling connected to their bodies and corporal histories through forming intimate connections to environments. Participants will explore Black, Brown and Indigenous research material that relates to presencing and embodied environmental belonging, as well as contributing their own experiences through writing and discussion.

The artist invites participants to bring a picture or object to the workshop that relates to a time or place in which they felt an ease within their bodies in an outdoor space and connected to other energies aside from their personhood. In addition, participants are asked to bring a handful of soil from a place which holds significance to them, which will act as a tactile prop for discussion during the workshop.

Please note this session is for people of colour.

Davinia-Ann's art practice explores the politics of colonial emotions and how these are impressed onto Bodies of Colour who reside within colonial spaces. She is interested in the implications of these emotions and the sensations they create in-between the outer and inner layer of one’s skin and the experiences of living within the societal peripheries that these emotions enable as they distort readings and connections to one’s physical and metaphorical body, connections between individual bodies, and connections to one’s environment.

Davinia-Ann is currently completing her MFA Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art and is a recipient of the Felix Slade Scholarship.

She has exhibited at the ICA, South London Gallery and was a supported artist at Deptford X Festival 2019. Her installation Earth Body. is currently in the exhibition "Freedom Is Outside The Skin '' at the Kunsthal 44Møen in Denmark and her sculpture Bod(y)ies That Weather is currently showing at Bold Tendencies. Davinia-Ann is also the founding member of Narration Group, an art collective of Women and Non-Binary people of colour, who collaborate on curatorial projects, focusing on understanding and unpicking the forms of discrimination which people of colour encounter, and ways to engage collectively and critically with these experiences.

---

The Future is a Collective Project was initiated by Deptford X director, Nathalie Boobis, in 2016 and is re-emerging in the digital realm as part of Deptford X Online 2020.

The Future is a Collective Project is about creating a learning environment that is non-hierarchical and in which no prior training, education or specific forms of knowledge are required to participate. All experiences are considered to be valid tools for knowledge production and sharing - from emotions, actions, stories and food to texts, films, artworks and music. The hope is that the group can share and learn from knowledge, narratives and ideas that have for too long been excluded from serious attention within the dominant and binary world view of white, western, capitalist patriarchy.

For Deptford X Online, we have invited 6 individuals whose practices we felt were driven by needs and desires to work beyond binary modes of thinking and doing to each lead a session. Each session coordinator offers their research, practice and work in progress as a starting point for a collective group discussion.

Absolutely no prior knowledge or expertise is necessary to join a session but as this is a collaborative research group, participants may be asked to participate in a group exercise followed by a discussion. More details on each session can be found below.

Due to the nature of online video conferencing, participation numbers are limited to 15 per session. We ask that you book your space in advance for this reason.

We will enable a waiting list so that anyone who is unable to participate can free up their space for someone else to join. Anyone participating in the group will be asked to abide by group code of conduct which will be distributed before the group. We can also provide tutorials on how to work Zoom for anyone who has not used this facility before.