From January 2010, London’s Artangel will be showing a new interaction project. The exhibition titled, “Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories” was created by Oreet Ashery and 12 lesbian asylum seekers who escaped countries such as Nigeria and Barbados due to discrimination against their sexual identities.
Within the project, a character takes her life stories and turns them into ideas such as rooms of a house, a dream and a gun that transforms into a camera. These forms of presentation were inspired by Ashery’s collection of discussions, doodles and interviews taken from emotional workshops with the other 12 women involved in Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories.
Ashery’s contribution to Artangel was built upon complex work with the asylum seekers, focusing on the long procedures which requires gay asylum seekers to prove their sexual orientation and lifestyle. As a result of studying these processes, Ashery created fictional characters that became symbols of the women involved. For example, the rooms of House represent diffferent aspects of a participant’s life effectively working as a theatrical self-portrait. Bin also symbolises social structure and soft studs are used to play on the idea of a ‘butch’ woman.
The exhibition will be showing at Artangel from 20 January 2010 and you can learn more about the project itself at http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/2010/staying
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