from me with Rose

2017

HD video, 43 minutes

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Direction, Camera and Edit: Deborah Olakigbe

Camera support: Frances Drayson

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‘from me with Rose’ portraits a relationship over a change in season. When the artist asks her mother about the gele which she wore at her cousin's wedding, a conversation opens up about culture, family and identity, barely scratching the surface of the seemingly complex relationships within this family’s tree. This daughter seems eager to understand something which her mother insists on keeping at bay; (raising questions about who or what may need protecting). Between attempting to create and to simply be with her mother, the artist picks up their interactions from the mundane to the poetic and the resulting video is patchwork of questions, assumptions, diversions and provocations. Watching from inside or outside of this real and specific sense of otherness, audiences are granted access into these private spaces where they might third-wheel these moments of relationship and find amid familiar frustrations, a measure of tenderness and some grace.