Tako Taal: At the shore, everything touches

About

Taal’s work often considers the paradoxes of black subjectivities, and her artistic practice evokes cited, spectral and physical bodies to undermine history, destabilise images and disrupt ideas around identity. At stake in her work are the psychic structures of colonial relations and the question of how vivid they remain in the present. This exhibition comprises a new film and accompanying collage, painting and archival materials based on familial photographs and documents belonging to the artist.

Within this project, Taal considers the changing nature of her family’s home village in The Gambia – Juffureh. This village is renowned for its proximity to the British slave fort established on what was once known as James Island, now named Kunta Kinteh Island referencing the central protagonist in Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots. This new body of work centres on this village – its geography, historical significance as a trade post and fort during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the ways in which its histories are used and instrumentalised in the present day. In this context, the artist looks to Juffureh as home, as a tourist site and as a point of departure for recent migrations.

In this exhibition, Taal reconstructs whispered anecdotes and artefacts from family archives to trace the shifts that merge and split boundaries between body, land and the state.