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Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Ballpoint pen on antique texts
44 x 32 cm
2025
My practice uses portraiture to question who is seen or overlooked, as well as whose histories, beliefs and experiences are remembered and valued. I draw in ballpoint pen directly onto antique book pages and maps, placing contemporary faces and figures onto surfaces already marked by history, ideology and authority.
Born in Southeast London and informed by my Sierra Leonean-Lebanese heritage, I explore identity, Britishness, grief, masculinity and vulnerability. Faith and spirituality enter the drawings through inherited beliefs, family histories and the search for meaning during moments of loss and uncertainty. I am interested in the ways belief can shape identity and moral understanding.
Some drawings address the historic omission of ethnically diverse figures from traditional British portraiture, while others turn inward towards grief, anxiety and mortality. The antique texts are both material and subject: their language carries earlier ideas about religion, philosophy, society and human existence, which come into dialogue with the figures I place upon them.
Across these different strands, I return to questions of visibility, memory and what we carry with us, culturally, spiritually and emotionally.
Ballpoint pen on antique texts
44 x 32 cm
2025
My practice uses portraiture to question who is seen or overlooked, as well as whose histories, beliefs and experiences are remembered and valued. I draw in ballpoint pen directly onto antique book pages and maps, placing contemporary faces and figures onto surfaces already marked by history, ideology and authority.
Born in Southeast London and informed by my Sierra Leonean-Lebanese heritage, I explore identity, Britishness, grief, masculinity and vulnerability. Faith and spirituality enter the drawings through inherited beliefs, family histories and the search for meaning during moments of loss and uncertainty. I am interested in the ways belief can shape identity and moral understanding.
Some drawings address the historic omission of ethnically diverse figures from traditional British portraiture, while others turn inward towards grief, anxiety and mortality. The antique texts are both material and subject: their language carries earlier ideas about religion, philosophy, society and human existence, which come into dialogue with the figures I place upon them.
Across these different strands, I return to questions of visibility, memory and what we carry with us, culturally, spiritually and emotionally.