| Description |
The publication contains newly commissioned writing by Kandace Siobhan Walker, alongside full colour images of video stills, artefacts from Taal’s personal archive and photographs of the exhibition.
Taal’s practice often considers the paradoxes of black subjectivities, and her artistic practice evokes cited, spectral and physical bodies to undermine history, destabilise images and disrupt ideas around identity.
At the shore, everything touches, is the first iteration of a project that considers the changing nature of Taal’s family’s home village in The Gambia – Juffureh. This village is renowned for its proximity to the British slave fort established on what was once known as James Island, now named Kunta Kinteh Island referencing the central protagonist in Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots. This new body of work centres on this village – its geography, historical significance as a trade post and fort during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the ways in which its histories are used and instrumentalised in the present day. In this context, the artist looks to Juffureh as home, as a tourist site and as a point of departure for recent migrations. |