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Where Will They Keep Our Memories?

Iman Sidonie-Samuels

Profile picture of Iman Sidonie-Samuels

Iman Sidonie Samuels is an award-winning visual artist, living and working in London.

Her practice centres itself around acts of collecting, navigating personal, familial and colonial histories, through a black British lens. Considering the act of collecting from a personal, cultural, familial point of view in opposition/contrast to museological practices of collection, her current body of work aims to reimagine modes of building, viewing and interacting with object histories and material through multiple channels.

Recent shows/projects/awards include MADD BDX: Researching the Shifting Identity of Caribbean Materials in the Archive, The Evening Standard Art Prize (Selected Winner), CTRL+C CTRL+V, Koppel Project (2023), Momentary Synergy, Colart x CSM Residency Show (2023).

Iman Sidonie Samuels is an award-winning visual artist, living and working in London.

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Focusing on conservation methods, modes of display, the roles of data and text in categorising history, accessibility to memory, this project considers how this might be changed or disrupted. 

Final work

Display case, made of steel industrial shelving, in the form of an 18th century armoire.

Where Will They Keep Our Memories?

Drawing on the design styles of 18th Century display cabinets, this piece examines the act of collecting and preservation from both an institutional viewpoint and personal, familial viewpoint. Amplifying how information is transmitted through families, through what channels, with a particular focus on storytelling and the memories attached to objects, these tactile and ephemeral representations of memory are contrasted with the visual structures/aesthetics of archival settings, offering an alternate viewpoint to the sterile conditions of the institutional archive and the categorisation of histories.

Handle With Care Video Documentation

Research and process

  • Industrial Steel shelving arranged in a non functional manner, with plaster boxed places at various heights.
  • Crypt Gallery installation view of Handle With Care
  • SKetchbook Drawings
  • Found industrial steel shelving.
  • Steel Shelving in the Archive.
  • Plaster Cast in a silicone mould.

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Where Will They Keep Our Memories?

Focusing on conservation methods, modes of display, the roles of data and text in categorising history, accessibility to memory, this project considers how this might be changed or disrupted. 

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