"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe." — James Baldwin, 1980

I am a multi-disciplinary artist working across textiles, photography, digital collage and installation. My practice is conceptually driven and asks how 'othering' is manufactured by institutions and society. I am interested in how the care and slow intention of sewing can marry with the destructive political power of collage. Blending what might seem like opposing worlds can bring a balance. My intent is to rehumanise marginalised individuals through appropriation and materiality. The work is, of course, about myself and my own experiences, but I am looking through the lens of a mother living with a global perspective, back at history and hesitant of the future.

I make environments that become activated and encountered by the public. Work is built to be explored multi-sensorially. Our eyes are not the only way we experience and feel. I want to invite questions that may be uncomfortable, but necessary. I believe art has the power and importance to disrupt and shift narratives. I use bureaucratic aesthetics to tap into this world, in the hope to catch even a small change in thinking.

My current exhibition comprises of two installations: Never Again. Again. and Between Us. The former consists of outdoor banner encounters, of reproduced articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then, Between Us, takes participants indoors where they'll encounter a polling booth sculpture with three compartments, each housing a quilt made from appropriated photographs of children in Gaza. The quilts invite a slow encounter, where historic voices have made their own marks. My work is made from a mother's perspective of care, nourishment and celebration.

My influences range from Alfredo Jaar, Lubaina Himid, Hank Willis Thomas and Bisa Butler. Along with academics Lina Khatib, Mohammed El-Kurd and Julia Bryan-Wilson. My visual language sits within Political Textiles, Political Photomontage and Social Practice.

As a mature emerging artist, mother of two neurodivergent children, and wife to a Xhosa man, my life has been unconventional. As a family we use love, respect and humour to navigate often clashing backgrounds and perspectives. I use my practice as a way of channelling and understanding what emerges from triangles of learned bias and inherited limitations.

Baldwin, J. (1980) 'Notes on the House of Bondage', The Nation, 1 November.