Break ∀way State
Painting Installation & Performance Archive
Break ∀way State reimagines the video Breakaway State (2020) through a series of paintings based on stills taken from the video footage. The video was commissioned for an online programme of the same name by The Parallel State, and funded by Future's Venture.
The installation traces the impact of migration, colonial legacy, and cultural memory through the embodied language of movement. By drawing on the mathematical universal quantifier '∀' (‘for all’), the work reframes this logical symbol to point towards emotional alignment in the face of state violence by indicating a shared departure from inherited conditions.
These works critique and reveal themes of migration, drawing on the aesthetics and cultural layering of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust and themes of cultural migration explored in Zora Neale Hurston's writings. Break ∀way State, as an evolving work, functions as archival fragments, connecting motion to memory.
2024, Oil on Canvas, 25.5 x 20 cm – Sold
Enquiry
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company?
2024, Oil on Wood, 17 x 15.5 cm – Sold
2025, Oil on canvas, crochet, hair, 98 x 43 x 3.5 cm
I shall try to lay my dreaming aside.
Try hard. But, Oh, if you knew my dreams!
My vaulting ambition! How I constantly live in fancy
In seven league boots, taking mighty strides across the world,
But conscious all the time of being
A mouse on a treadmill.
Madness ensues.
I am beside myself with chagrin half of the time;
The way to the blue hills is not on tortoise back,
It seems to me,
But on wings.
I haven’t the wings,
And must ride the tortoise.
2024, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 30 x 2 cm
Oil on canvas, crochet, hair, 78 x 54 x 4.5 cm