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Leeds College of Art & Design   2008/2009

Sandra Whyles

I am concerned with the Afrocentric idea and thought. This ideology puts African people at the centre rather than at the margins of social and political and cultural discourses and effectively challenges the ‘Canon’. The Canon invisibilises and silences the African voice and makes the African the ‘racialised other’ and the ‘object’ not the ‘subject’. My art strives to form new and alternative narratives that are not always made visible through popular culture.

I choose Black or African subjectivity because I believe my art depends on it. It is also the life that I live and experience everyday so to attempt to execute something totally divorced from that would not reflect my reality or my self belief. It’s a way of anchoring the art practice and of establishing my ideology from the beginning.

I have contextualised the genre of ceramics, printing and photography and brought the work into view as a contemporary fine art practice, creating a discourse between the object, subject and its environment – physical, political, cultural and social.

The art practice is a continuous evolutionary process. I see my art as experiment and research possibly never reaching a final conclusion but always striving to make a visual, cultural and emotional impact.