GUT HEALING

GUT HEALING was commissioned by the Portico Library- Manchester: Oct 2017

Curated by Amy Lawrence

Featuring new work by: Harrold Offeh: Desktop Journey. Elmi Ali: A Pocket In The Poem, Amy Lawrence: GUT HEALING: Fruits Of Labour

GUT HEALING (2017) responded to Black History Month by positioning Black voices into the weighted and historically white space of the Portico Library. This curated event featured the work of artists Elmi Ali, a Manchester based theatre maker and spoken word artist and Harold Offeh, a Cambridge based live artist often exploring black and queer identities through live and recorded interventions. Both presented new and re-worked pieces for the event alongside my own new work titled 'GUT HEALING: Fruits Of Labour'  a play on the ideas of Women’s gut feelings, healing the past and different personal histories, inspired by research into the complex relationships between feminism and the Slavery ‘abolition.’ The work consisted of individual scores performed live, created through on-on-one conversations with Seleena Daye, Henrietta Phoebe Dunn, Alison Forde, Diana Tap and Miray Sidhom ( the performers) and their personal connections to Manchester, each participated in the work with no prior knowledge of the score. The work mapped my fragmented knowledge and exploration of the research with a sense of shared experience in relation to girl to womanhood, a reworking of ideas explored within from SO FEY. The work is based abstractly around texts by Black activists that I discovered during my research period such as the  - AIN'T I A WOMAN - Edited Speech by Sojourner Truth. 

Special thanks to The Portico Library James Moss Camille Smithwick, Esther Clark + Volunteers

Thanks to long term collaborator Joe Whitmore for the video below!

Photo credit: Esther Clarke