Exhibiting between Wednesday 17^th September and the Sunday 16^th November 2008 @ Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery

As part of the wider tendency of Bristol to make an effort to come to terms with its slave trade past, ‘Voices’ an exhibition on at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery presents work by African and African-Caribbean artists living and working in or around Bristol. The works all have in common the elements of intercultural relationships, attempts to find an identity between different socio-cultural backgrounds, as well as concerns about the situation faced by the countries of origin of the artists.

The gallery has organized a series of free talks to accompany the exhibition by participating artists as well as academics related to the subject but even if you are not inclined to spend an afternoon listening to an in-depth analysis of the visual expression of cultural merging, it’s still worth it to pay a visit to Voices.

The exhibition is small, with a very distinct feeling of cohesion, since the works selected are all variations on the theme of art as the medium to approach, understand, criticise and express issues related to cultural heritage torn between two worlds. Every artist, however, has their own original way of presenting their reactions to these issues, reflecting – and this is the most interesting part of visiting Voices – their personal perception and psychological representation of their history, culture and present identity.

Among these highly personalized works, you’ll find a video by Gloria Ojulari Sule presenting her experiences of mixing with women in Dakar, trying to understand her position in the country as a British citizen with African origins; the mind-map-like presentation of the Darfur situation by Bandele Iyapo; and the work by ceramics artist Helga Gamboa on the ‘3 Cs’ (Colonialism, Christianity, Civil War) presenting the influence of Western culture on her country of origin, Angola. For a feeling closer to home of what exactly it is these people are expressing when raising the issues of multiple identity, see Glenn Jordan’s series of photographs of Welsh mothers and daughters, questioning our stereotypes of cultural identity within Britain itself.

You’ll walk out, maybe not artistically moved to your core, but with a sense of understanding of cultural variation in Bristol, what it means for the city and how it is experienced by its citizens – and this was probably the very goal of Voices.

www.bristol.gov.uk/museums

Anna Leon