2016
Multimedia Installation. Looped projection, table, two chairs, two speakers, family photographs, rug.
Dadangu is an intimate exploration of sisterhood and shared history. The installation, named after the Swahili for ‘my sister', shows the artist (based in London) and her sister (based in Dubai) mining a collection of treasured family photographs, using these as triggers to explore the narratives of their shared lives. Echoing the migratory nature of their family story, the process of creating the work involved the physical photographs traveling between the two sisters. They told their stories separately, and their voices are brought together in the installation. In overlapping the two sisters' versions of what should be the same stories, Dadangu explores the harmony but also the inevitable disconnect and dissonance of personal memory.
A projection of the looped film projects downwards onto a square table covered in the artist's old family photographs facing downwards. On either side of the table is a chair with a speaker placed upon it. One speaker holds the artist's voice, the other her sister's, so they overlap within the space.