Bloc Billboard: Otis Mensah

25 May - 4 October

Free & Open to All

Documentation image for fawns of the city. Image credit: stephanie o’connor

fawns of the city is a poem and sound piece by artist-poet Otis Mensah. Listen in the audio above.

The piece is a return to self via diaspora and community. Our many delicate states of home, friendship and faith are explored amidst the noise of our disconnected identity. Whilst investigating issues of racial fragmentation, the piece proposes joy-seeking and the pursuit of personal liberation, exploring and reclaiming notions of Blackness. Using our hair-as-antenna, we can rejoin the natural world and find anchor even within societal disharmony, making sense of the frictional ebbs and flows.  

With gratitude to photographer stephanie o'connor and designer Carmen Reina for bringing the visual work to life and to Jess Poyner for contributing towards the project’s creative vision and for lending their vocal harmonies to the recording.

Installed outside our gallery space on Eyre Lane, fawns of the city is available to view at any time of day from 25 May 2023. The QR code on site links directly to the poem’s audio file.

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Otis Mensah (recipient of Jerwood Arts Live Work Fund & Arts Council England's Developing your Creative Practice) is a musician and multi-disciplinary artist exploring the intersection of poetry and experimental music(s). Taking influence from the rhythmic and expressive freedom of Jazz, Otis’s work uses aesthetic language as an instrument to solo through themes of race, identity, gender and the body.