Spoken Worlds – Practising Bilingualism in Diaspora
Spoken Worlds follows the thread of using native language, interlanguage, and translation in curating and artistic practices in the UK and was co-curated by Moritz Cheung, Roxana Gibescu, Marta Marsicka, Basil Olton, and June Yuen Ting – five curators identifying as immigrants and diasporic.
The Spoken Worlds film is a collection of interviews and reflections on the multiple challenges of being an immigrant or a diaspora professional in the UK. The film takes a deep dive into their art practices and sheds light on their experiences of being bilingual and how this affects their creative practice. The starting point for these interviews was a set of questions we, as a curatorial group, came up with about the language(s) used in the diaspora. We invited the following art practitioners from various diasporas in the UK: visual artist Małgorzata Dawidek, poet and curator Simona Nastac, and research curator and artist Denise Kwan, to ponder on their practices.
Another part of the project is a manifesto exploring the idea that linguistic matters are political and social. We, the five co-curators, have produced a written manifesto outlining our ambitions and goals towards the inclusion of immigrant artists and a useful dictionary detailing the meaning of immigration-related terms, such as micro-history, microaggression, and xenoracism.
Click here to read and download the manifesto.
Spoken Worlds is supported by the British Art Network, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Tate and Arts Council England. Delivered in partnership with Platform Asia.
Contact details
Spoken Worlds is an ongoing project to enhance accessibility for diasporic artists and curators within the sector. If you wish to showcase the film on your platform or to support this project, please email: info@platformasia.org.uk
