Heather Agyepong: On embodiment and the self
In this episode, we talk with Heather Agyepong about embodiment and the self. She explains what reimagination means in her practice when representing black women in history ethically. Heather also explores the gatekeeping present in art and how this drives her to make her work visceral in order to transcend linguistic accessibility. She reflects on her decision to focus on self-portraits after witnessing the exploitative and distorted depictions of e-waste in Ghana. Finally, Heather talks about self-exploration through art and balancing this with establishing boundaries.
What you’ll find inside:
“It’s more about what I’m feeling and what sort of medium I need and then I fall into these different dimensions of making art.” (4.10)
“I think the reason I make art is to trust myself and rediscover myself. I think for a long period of time there was just so many different layers of who I was which were just kind of projected on to me… my quest in making art is to start removing those layers and I guess whilst I’m removing the layers I’m trusting myself more.” (4.41)
“There was something about looking back which helped me to understand my present circumstance, using these women from history to explore myself.” (6.22)
“A violence sometimes happens with these women where because of the lack of knowledge, they are created as like caricatures or their lives are reduced in some sort of way. So if anything, it feels like I’m trying to kind of repair some of the violence that happens in those old images.” (7.55)
“My work is not really about perfection it’s the intent and the intention of making something accessible.” (12.14)
“There’s something about giving it up to the camera and trying to make the camera not a critical viewer … more like a witness or an observer. So you kind of take the power back from that gaze it becomes less of a critical observer more of just like someone witnessing you.” (16.40)
“I think that work is always like the last chapter of something. Healing is a constant thing but in terms of that specific thing I’ve processed it I’ve got a revelation of something that’s happened, it doesn’t belong to be anymore.” (25:34)
What does photography ethics mean to Heather?
“An empathetic ear, selfless reflection and progress. I think the history of photography has been ethnographic, anthropological and I think that often haunted photography for a very long time. The progress idea is that we need to evolve from this idea that its truth or about othering. I think that photography at its best is about connectivity and I think that it’s the responsibility of the photographer to engage with those three things.” (36.08)
Links:
Heather Agyepong is a British Ghanaian visual artist and actor who lives and works in London. Her art practice is concerned with mental health and wellbeing, invisibility, the diaspora and the archive. She uses both lens-based practices and performance with an aim to culminate a cathartic experience for both herself and the viewer. She adopts the technique of re-imagination to engage with communities of interest and the self as a central focus within the image.
She has been nominated for Prix Pictet & Paul Huf Award in 2016, 2018 & 2021. Her work exists in a number of collections including Autograph ABP, Arts Council England, and the National Portrait Gallery, among many others.
She was nominated for the South Bank Sky Arts Breakthrough Award 2018, awarded the Firecracker Photographic Grant 2020 and has been selected as part of Foam Talent 2021, Jerwood/Photoworks Award 2022, Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer Award 2021 and The Photographers Gallery New Talent Award 2021. She is a Nikon European Ambassador and was recently selected as an exhibiting artist for Taylor Wessing Photo Prize 2023.
You can see her work at https://www.heatheragyepong.com
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