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Diaspora Pavilion

The pavilion is a result from the project ‘Diaspora Platform’ between ICF International Curators Forum and UAL University of the Arts London, which was co-founded by David Bailey, Nicola Green, Peter Clayton and David Lammy. This project was designed to deliver mentoring and professional development by ten selected mentors for twelve UK-based emerging artists whose work engages with the topic of the diaspora.

Emerging artists: Larry Achiampong, Barby Asante, Libita Clayton, Kimathi Donkor, Michael Forbes, susan pui san lok, Paul Maheke, Khadija Saye, Erika Tan, Barbara Walker, Abbas Zahedi

Mentors: Sokari Douglas Camp, Ellen Gallagher, Joy Gregory, Isaac Julien,Dave Lewis, Hew Locke, Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier, Nicola Green and Yinka Shonibare MBE

A total of twelve artists came together under the banner of the Diaspora Pavilion to create a living testament to what it means to house many nations within one's body, psyche, and practice as an artist, and to question the trust and loyalty that those with more stable national narratives place on the nation state. This is a pavilion created because artists of complex, multinational backgrounds - and black women artists, especially - find that the doors of high art are closed to them. The Diaspora Pavilion had one of the most ebullient opening ceremonies - and a kicking party afterwards, with a long queue of jostling hopefuls spilling out on to the street, much to the ire of cursing locals who simply wanted to pass through. But when those who are marginalised and excluded create space for themselves in an environment that would otherwise be inhospitable to their persons and their work, the response is bewilderment at first, and then resistance.