Stuart Hall Foundation and iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) have announced that artist and maker Dharma Taylor has been selected for the sixth Stuart Hall Library Artist Residency.
The residency allows visual artists the space to think about some of the key themes related to the work of iniva and the Stuart Hall Foundation, including the language of the diaspora, culture, identity, and archiving. This year, applicants were invited to respond to the concept of “the living archive” and consider the ways in which a site-based archive may hold multiple narratives that are contested.
Dharma Taylor is a multidisciplinary artist, combining textiles with woodwork to produce narrative-rich, design-driven works that seek to observe aspects of systems within which we exist and that allow her to explore her position within the Diaspora and contemporary British society.
Her project ‘Part of the Furniture’ will focus on the radical act of craft, resulting in pieces of textiles or solid oak furniture inspired by Stuart Hall’s ‘interest in the experience of being alive during such disruptive times’. During the three-month residency, she will be focusing her research on racialised labour, migration of textile workers, examining the politics of cloth, and exploring what it means to be a craftsperson of colour today.
Dharma said,
“During this residency I want to be able to research in a way that is not just about creating beautiful objects and the process of making but rather to engage and explore the issues of our time and do it in a way that redresses the balance of equality and opportunity within the design industries, shining a light on an optimistic future.”
Dharma was selected for the Jerwood Bursaries 2019, a programme which provided funding to help artists explore and develop their next steps, whether through supporting skills and knowledge development and/or supporting the first stage development of a new idea. Her Jerwood Bursary funded research and development for a series of hand-woven tapestries illustrated from photographs of her childhood hometown during the late 80s-early 90s.
The Stuart Hall Library Artist Residency will take place between May and July, and Dharma will share her research as part of a public event in the autumn.
Find out more about the residency on the Stuart Hall Foundation website.
