Here To Stay
a series of photographic portraits and oral histories commissioned by the NHS in 2018, just months before the Windrush Scandal hit the headlines …
2018 marked the seventy year anniversary of Windrush Generation pioneers arriving in the UK, which led to the birth of the National Health Service, in 1948. Pioneers of the Windrush Generation were and continue to be the bloodline and backbone of our NHS.
The exhibition launched earlier than expected due to popular demand: half of the portraits and oral history transcripts were exhibited on Brick Lane, East London - when the series was still a work in progress.
Here To Stay toured to fifteen locations across London, Birmingham & the wider West Midlands (2018-2023)
EXHIBITIONS
University of Birmingham: The Exchange, Centenary Square (27th October 2022)
Wolverhampton Art Gallery (8th August 2020 - 10th January 2021)
University of Birmingham’s Medical School executive corridor (October 2021 - October 2022)
Black Country and West Birmingham NHS Trusts Awards Evening (October 2021)
Coventry Cathedral projected on the exterior (October 2021)
Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington, London (October - December 2021)
Soho House, Handsworth, Birmingham (June 2020)
St. Pancras Hospital, central London (July - October 2019)
St. Georges Hospital, Tooting, London (May 2019)
University of Birmingham’s Medical School (November 2019)
The Gap Centre for Cultural Action, Balsall Heath, Birmingham (November - December 2019)
Warwick University & Modern Records Centre (May - June 2019) supported by Wellcome Trust
Sandwell Hospital’s Education Centre (October 2018) remains on permanent display
Medicine Gallery, central Birmingham (September 2018)
Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, East London (August 2018)
A touring set is available - we welcome likeminded individuals and organisations to get in touch to discuss working in partnership.
west indies to west midlands (2013 - 2015)
The beginnings of ongoing collaborations with pioneers of the Windrush Generation: a self-initiated documentary portraiture series of West Indian war veterans who fought for the British military and now reside across north Birmingham. No contextual captions are provided because some veterans requested that their names, origins & details of their military service remained anonymous, to protect their identities.
Portrait sitters and project participants leading a procession through the gallery space with battle standards, before presenting their censored history to the audience - in their own words.
Exhibited at The Drum Intercultural Arts Centre from Remembrance Day on the centenary of WW1
(11th of November 2014 - 7th January 2015)
Balsall Heath carnival (2013-2017)
Sunny Intervals (2010 - 2012)
MOORPOOL, haRBORNE, bIRMINGHAM
Moorpool Estate was built according to 19th century, Arts and Crafts movement, Garden Suburb principles; sensitive planning with the aim of social reform. The Garden Suburb also drew on new ideas of Garden Cities, which were intended to be self-sufficient economic units, and they were a reaction to the
back-to-back housing that excluded light, air, and sunshine from urban dwellings.
DALAL ARCHIVE (SHORT FILM) + POP UP PORTRAIT STUDIO: PARTICIPATORY INSTALLATION
Dalal Archive (2014)
6 minutes 29 seconds
Directed and co-edited by Inès Elsa Dalal
Exploring the subtle and nuanced intersubjectivity of written and oral histories. Drawing upon personal as well as collective memory. The photographs are a personal archive of from an album dated 1958-70, gifted to me by my German Grandmother. Narrated through a conversation / anecdotal family history with my father about the German-Parsi element of my ancestry.