Negotiations by Maggie Scott
Textile artist Maggie Scott shows off the results of her shape of things bursary in a solo show at New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester opening this month (until 20 May)
The shape of things is a three-year long, Arts Council-sponsored initiative encouraging artists and makers to look at ideas about identity within our multi-cultural society. As an English-born artist with an Afro-Caribbean heritage, Scott is in the perfect position to do this and in the current show she uses autobiographical material as a starting point to explore larger questions about ethnicity and identity. Called Negotiations, Black in a White Majority Culture, the exhibition looks at how everyone – whatever their skin colour – is forced to negotiate their identity within the dominant culture, although Scott makes it clear that while all people compromise, some make more compromises than others. She takes old family pictures and combines them with contemporary political images. Wedding Day juxtaposes an image of her parents exchanging loving looks with a National Front Keep Britain White rally, while an installation, Step Out of the Shadows, looks at the dubious ethics of selling skin lightening products. These powerful images are created by felting printed silks.
www.leicester.gov.uk/maggiescott
Advertisement
