# Project Description

expat

Rio Walker

Summary

Final work

College Chelsea College of Arts

Course BA (Hons) Fine Art

Graduation year 2025

Walker’s muse for the expat series are all contemporary renditions of the trickster figure 'Kwaku Ananse' from Akan folklore. Moral stories such as his migrated over to the Caribbean via the transatlantic slave trade, and continued to be passed on orally and in literature through each generation, serving as a verbal echo of a rich culture that was stolen from a nation. The work seeks to give platform to these other non-westernised pantheons of folklore by utilising a use of more traditional materials used in royal portraiture countered by the more casual positioning of Anansi being more akin to a selfie or an intimate moment between old friends, or a glimpse of a fragile moment.

Final work

expat (2025)

some brother anansi, 2024

that brother anansi, 2024

intercepted signal number JMSE, 2025

The figure of Anansi was carried forward as a muse into the artist’s video works as well, such as within intercepted signal number JMSE (2025). Walker’s video work deals with themes of racial representation in film, tokenism, and specifically the lack of diversity within Science Fiction settings. The final outcome was a series of different vignettes of a fictional world, establishing a complex militarised world in theme with tropes established within the genre, but undercut with contemporary dance. A Black god, for a Black land. Not necessarily a moral god, but one that at least resembles his people.

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Walker’s muse for the expat series are all contemporary renditions of the trickster figure 'Kwaku Ananse' from Akan folklore. Moral stor...

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