“We should be alert to the toxicity that everyone can have,” says Rhea Dillon, about the symbolic angels and demons that inhabit us all and inspire her multidisciplinary practice. “I think that there is space for critique. I think there’s just a lot of fear.” Speaking to editor Steph Kretowicz for AQNB’s latest Artist Statement podcast, the London-based artist, writer and poet has made a name for herself with her photography and film work exploring, abstracting and undermining what she calls Western culture’s ‘rules of representation’.
Dillon has developed her own visual and conceptual language for tracing histories and advocating for “equality-led perspectives on how we visualise Black bodies” with her self-coined term of “humane afrofuturism”. Her archival and research practice includes painting, installation, images, video and olfaction, and includes short film ‘The Name I Call Myself’ and her more recent net art piece Uchronia et Uchromia, exhibited online at External Pages late last year. The extensive questionnaire turns this instrument of governing, sorting and organising people in on itself, by compelling its audience to engage with and reflect on their own beliefs and values, in an act of what Mandy Harris Williams calls ‘critique as care‘.
‘Face Everything & Rise’ is the latest in our Artist Statement podcast series, with past episodes, featuring Akinola Davis Jr, Cristine Brache, Zach Blas, Legacy Russell, and more. The full episode is accessible to our subscribers right now on Patreon. Sign up now: www.patreon.com/aqnb.**
