Platform 21: Imprint(s): Anisa Nuh-Ali
Imprint(s) is Anisa Nuh-Ali’s first solo exhibition. Her practice retrieves the half-forgotten / partly remembered experiences of the Somali diaspora and explores their place in global Black histories. The Sheffield-based artist’s immersive work ties together scavenged fragments, including photos, administrative documents and inherited objects from near and far.
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden and having lived her formative years in the UK, Anisa refers to Somalia as ‘back home’ even though she has never been there. Her key impetus in this project is to present the memories, spectres and keepsakes bequeathed to her over the years. Through archival research and careful, revelatory conversations with her family and community, Imprint(s) breathes life into an otherwise phantasmic ‘back home’ in four distinct scenes: a loving reconstruction of her parents’ early lives; a gathering of talismans not wholly understood; an absurd basketball game / an ode to familial loss and athleticism; and a prayer. Together, they summon the many forms of migrant longing that yearns through space and time, across continents and generations.
Anisa Nuh-Ali is a Somali conceptual artist, researcher and documenter who works in a wide variety of media, from painting, installation, film, sculpture and photography to sound and moving image. She is interested in Black liberation, Black feminist theory and post-colonialism. Her research reaches, examines and comments on Black athleticism, culture, aesthetics and politics, primarily working within the fields of installations creating sculptural readymades. She interrogates and explores the intersections of race, gender, religion and class, as her practice is intrinsically linked to her identity. She puts Black narratives at the forefront of her practice and looks to oral histories and communities, whilst utilising archives as a tool for re-imagining.
Platform is an established artistic development programme at Site Gallery which allows artists to explore new ideas in a public space, testing new thinking and research with engaged audiences. In Platform 21, five artists will share new work at a multi-site exhibition, across Site Gallery, Yorkshire Artspace and Bloc Projects.