Call When You Reach
Madinah Farhannah Thomson
Friday, November 24, 2023
'Black backs have a long history of carrying loads - white loads'
Living While Black - Guilaine Kinouani
Madinah manipulates, grapples with and shunts Jesmonite across the sand and to the sea. It is a fight
against the burden of being expected to carry white women. It is about white feminisms disregard for
and abuse of Black female bodies. It is about the weight of whiteness on Blackness. What does it mean
for Black people to carry white people. What is the labour of this - what is the weight that we are
carrying and how does it affect us, daily.
Prophecies
I dragged you from the earth
bore you
and still I bear
our history is long
intertwined
like poison
all I want is to shake you off
violently
put you down
heavily
drag only myself forwards
it's too hot
a drop of sweat drips down my chest
all I want is for you to be gone from here
from my vicinity
all I want is to be free
Holding me down
holding me tight
you'll never let me go
my image defines you
and your power
where are we going
if not to our deaths together
the end calling for new relations
neither can live while the other survives
Madinah Farhannah Thompson is a visual artist and writer whose work investigates Black British experiences. She is particularly enraged by the misrepresentation of the Black female body and the projections that are placed on individuals - namely the extreme polarities imposed on Black women where they are expected to be both a hyper-visible Jezebel and the invisible mammy figure at one time. Her work is research and text led and incorporates poetry, memory and film.
Most recently she has been examining how Black people exist in rural spaces in the U.K. and how people are often alienated or isolated when they exist in these environments. She grew up in Norfolk and is concerned with how you can feel attached to a land that in turn rejects you.
This work has been profiled by Hibaq Farah in a recent Guardian article. Within her performances she often places herself as an object, to consider ideas of fetishisation. What does it mean, on a day to day basis, to exist within a context of objectification?
Thompson's work often looks at intergenerational healing for example her work Myrene where she plaited a constellation of materials, rubbing them with fragrant caster oil accompanied by an audio recording of a conversation between her father and her grandmother. This was an investigation into actions which are fundamental to the nurturing of black womxn, such as sitting between a maternal figures knees and having your hair cainrowed, or having your skin creamed after a bath. These actions are repeated infinitesimally during Black peoples lives, connecting us to our ancestry and continuing legacy.
Her current project Call When You Reach is made up of performance, collage and film and investigates the impact of trauma and how this leads to a disconnection from the physical body. Thompson is determined through her work to heal herself and others. She embraces the slur of the angry Black woman and uses her practice to try and navigate a world that does not make space for her.
Thompson studied at The Cass School of Art receiving the Owen Riley prize for best in show for her BA final show performance No Black Girls Sorry. She completed her MA at Goldsmiths University where her final show film Saliva & Tears/ Underneath You went on to win the 2020 Ingram Collection Young Contemporary Talent Prize. Thompson has had residencies at the Venice Biennale, Hestercombe House and Gardens and the Cob x Plop residency in London.
She has exhibited and performed at The Mall Galleries, Wellcome Collection and Camden People's Theatre. She has been published in Social Work?: Open, Shades of Noir and on the British Council Website and her work has recently been featured in The Guardian. Madinah also co-facilitates Prism Writers, a writers group for black women and non-binary people in London.
