Queer Migrations Festival runs until 9 August
BY SHAHLA OMAR, IMAGES BY AMY-ROSE EDLYN
In the crush of queerphobia, transphobia, anti-migrant and anti-refugee violence in the UK and austerity-induced scarcity in the arts, what safe, communal spaces do queer migrant artists have?
The Queer Migrations Festival currently taking place in southeast London is one such sanctuary, centering the works and experiences of queer migrants with a connection to the London Borough of Greenwich.
The festival was organised by Bold Mellon, an arts collective uplifting queer and migrant voices, with support from Royal Museums Greenwich, Royal Greenwich Festivals and Royal Borough of Greenwich.
The festival’s main fixture is the Queer Migrations art exhibition at Firepit Art Gallery, a bustling riverside space in Greenwich. Emilia Nurmukhamet, co-founder of Bold Mellon Collective and curator of the festival, guides me through the exhibition space; London has been her home for 8 years now.
Upstairs at the gallery is a studio space where several artists have residencies, and in a sign of the community present in the building of this exhibition, the Firepit’s resident artists have helped, here and there, with the setup of the exhibition space; for example, the addition of mirrors enhance our experience with the exhibition’s sculpture pieces, letting us see all angles of Lenka Kalafutova’s faux-relic vases, and our own reflection as we (carefully) try on the black sheep head sculpture by Rishi Khurana.
The exhibition space itself is the Fire Room, whose walls weave in and out, encouraging you to navigate the exhibition in your own way. It feels very much like a living room in a well-loved home, a temporary haven for the works of artists whose lives have been marked by transience. Some of the pieces fit so naturally in the space, almost as though the works and the space were made for each other. The painted border to Jae Lim’s Threshold of Visibility seems to camouflage with the wooden wall backdrop, so much so that a hand depicted in the work that reaches in search of the familiar, seems to protrude out of the painting and onto the wall.
The two figures in Threshold of Visibility are so different, one in thermal-image red, orange, and yellow and the other blue, white and airy are a stark contrast to the bold two-headed figure of Elisia Brown’s Duality that sits beside Lim’s work. The reflection of Threshold of Visibility also makes itself visible as you gaze at the stark and soft photographic self-portrait in Nat Sultan’s I Exist hung opposite.
As politicians and general badminds work to erase and purge the UK of queer, trans, and migrant presence, these artists are insisting on making, or retrieving, a mark. Tasalla Tabasom marks textile with body; Misha Zakharov dusts off and builds a queer and decolonial film archive; Kalafutova feigns the old and contributes anew with queer imagery painted onto fresh vases; Lapis Al-Shammaa captures by camera and puts to paper a pomegranate’s temporary staining of the skin.
Other events part of the festival (Mapping Our Roots with Touch Grass; zine-making with Sold Out Publishing) have also centred this making of marks. Bringing the festival to a close on 9 August will be a live-art performance event at the National Maritime Museum’s Ocean Court; it’s a rare chance for queer, migrant artists to perform in a space so expansive, and at an institution that memorialises expansion.
The callout for the exhibition welcomed work that considered “queer world-building in pursuit of borderless futures”. While Emilia and I speak, the artwork catalyses similar conversations about coming from peoples without nation states; Emilia is Tatar, while I am Kurdish. Borders have had a deep impact on both of our lives, though I am British-born. The sanctuary of the exhibition encourages conversation that fluctuates between the local and transnational. We feel compelled to talk about Russian imperialism, Palestine and pinkwashing, repression and erasure of Kurdish and Tatar identity, arts centres and collectives in London that empower queer artists, and local mosques that allow for reconnection with faith.
The world is a big, big place, but it is one of infinite connections. The soft palette, the fluidity, and the multimedia nature of artist Yaya’s work reminds me intensely of the art a friend of mine, themselves a trans person of colour, makes, and I wonder aloud if they know Yaya. “Maybe they do,” Emilia says. “It’s a small world.”
Queer Migrations Festival runs until 9 August.
Queer Migrations exhibition participating artists: april forrest lin 林森, Elisia Brown, Elvira Pushkareva, Jae Lim, Lapis Al-Shammaa, Lenka Kalafutova, Misha Zakharov, Nat Sultan, Rishi Khurana, Tasalla Tabasom and Yaya
Queer Migrations live-art performance participating artists: Abel Atsede, Chen Xu, Emilia Nurmukhamet and Oscar Rodriguez
Shahla Omar is a British-Kurdish journalist and writer, based in London.
Queer Migrations is presented by: The Bold Mellon Collective CIC
Conceived, produced and curated by: Emilia Nurmukhamet
Co-Produced: by Amy-Rose Edlyn and Dear Annie
Design: by Dear Annie
Supported by Royal Museums Greenwich, Firepit Art Gallery and Studios CIC, The Royal Borough of Greenwich and Royal Greenwich Festivals
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