Artist
Tayo Adekunle
Tayo Adekunle is a British Nigerian photographer based in Edinburgh. Working a lot with self-portraiture, she uses her work to explore issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality as well as racial and colonial history.
Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th century colonial photography. She works to subvert established notions about black female sexuality and the standard of beauty ascribed to black females. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Photography, she has been a recipient of the SSA New Graduate Award and the Degree Show Purchase Prize, resulting in her work becoming part of The University of Edinburgh Art Collection.
Reclamation of the Exposition
Reclamation of the Exposition (2020) explores the commodification, fetishization and sexualisation of the black female body, specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The work is influenced by ethnographic photographs which were circulated as pornography. Black (and other racial minority) bodies were photographed either naked in front of a white background, stripped of their identity, or surrounded by random tropical plants to make the photographs seem authentic. Using self-portraiture and digital collage whilst drawing from Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte’s photographic collection ‘Boshimans et Hottentots’, the works combine the contemporary with historic ways of being seen. Referencing her Nigerian heritage, Adekunle explores the relationship between the past and present ways the black female body is treated.
London-based Sophie Gladstone produces refreshingly honest work about her pursuit of cultural capital, through considered still lifes and self-portraits. She draws attention to society’s obsession with performance and perception of success, honing in on details of daily rituals and consumerism. Gladstone curates a duality in her aesthetic, which many might recognise and relate to in appreciation or distaste.
Studies in Huddersfield brought Silvana Trevale to the UK from Venezuela, where she was born and raised. Though the photographer has already seen notable success with her commercial work, her personal projects deserve equal recognition. Her ongoing series, Venezuelan Youth, captures the younger generation of her home country with a warmth that contrasts the social and political crisis currently unfolding there.
Billy Barraclough is a recent graduate from the MA photography course at University of the West of England, Bristol. In his tender black and white documentary projects, he captures moments of quiet contemplation with captivating sensitivity. The fact that he approaches his practice from a personal perspective is a token of his understanding of human connection and communication.
Another recent graduate, Tayo Adekunle completed a BA at Edinburgh College of Art this year. Placing herself in front of the camera lens, she directly confronts
photography’s dark history by recreating 19th century images of sensationalised Black bodies. Her work is as much an interrogation of dehumanisation, as a personal exploration of her culture, ancestry and inherited trauma.
Swiss photographer Matthieu Croizier completes our 2021 nominations. Taking inspiration from a variety of sources, which ranges from 19th century medical archives to David Lynch’s 1977 horror sci-fi Eraserhead, he uses his lens to explore queerness and his experience of it. For Croizier, photography gives him the space to understand his identity, the language of the queer community, and all the superficial social constructs that have been connected to them over time. It is an act of self-expression – literally and figuratively.