Words: Ruby Deakin
With the launch of their Biennial on 20th July, Dig Where You Stand is inviting locals to explore the untold history of the region with a city-wide showcase of artistic talent. Exposed Magazine spoke with Creative Director Désirée Reynolds about the upcoming exhibition.
The ‘archival justice movement’ aims to shed light on the city’s unheard stories through art, dismantling the myths of a purely white history maintained and entrenched for centuries. Dig Where You Stand powerfully reclaims the region’s racial history by recovering these stories.
For the event, they commissioned 14 artists in a creative spectacle of the heritage and culture of working-class people of colour, one never seen before in South Yorkshire on this scale.
Désirée explained that her initial vision for the movement was clear and that she was committed to uncovering historical realities for marginalised groups.
“If you’re from the diaspora, whatever diaspora that might be, and you go to school, and you’re learning history, you know it’s not the full story, because you’re being told something different at home. So, I’ve always been thinking, ‘What is the full story?'”
Archives have formed the backbone of the exhibition’s creation over the last six months, with featured artists invited to explore documents and historical fragments as inspiration for their work. Each artist will put their own creative slant on reviving and interpreting the stories unearthed, ranging from poetry to textile art to shadow puppetry.
Archives have been central to the work of DWYS since it began, acting as powerful tools to bring the past into the present. By exploring documents and records, the movement recognises how history continues to inform the experiences of marginalised people today in a way that cannot be forgotten. So often are injustices dismissed as ‘products of their time’, but DWYS is keen not to let the passage of time overturn their significance.
On the idea of this dismissal, Désirée commented: “It’s not useful. It’s an unuseful metric of how to view and frame the archives. It shuts down conversation. It makes it easier to excuse atrocity. Sheffield Archives were brilliant – they were absolutely passionate and committed to the idea of racial justice.”
The revival of the past through art hopes to empower people of colour to claim their connection to history, while acknowledging that there will always be ‘gaps’ – undocumented stories, identities and voices that will never be truly heard.
“You have to approach the archives knowing you’re going to find gaps. You can’t expect it all to be written out for you nice and neatly,” Désirée said.
By bringing history to life, the creative responses on show recognise these ‘gaps’ and the injustice of a past that cannot be fully reconciled. But the movement is careful to avoid speaking on behalf of those denied the opportunity to tell their own stories.
“The idea of giving a voice to the voiceless, I don’t really subscribe to. It denies people their agency. What I’m very mindful of with Dig Where You Stand, is that we don’t do that. What we’re doing is we’re saying, ‘They were here.’ Art, for me, lets you think about the trauma of the stories and look at which bits touch you, and filling in some gaps, but not the gap, because that can’t be done.”
Désirée, herself a writer championing the stories of working-class Black women and intersectionality, spoke of the inspiration for her work.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my great-grandad, who died when he was 111 and worked on the Panama Canal. He had to run away from one job that he had because they found out he could read and write. That’s always kind of haunted me a little bit and goes towards my thinking and being a creative person, having a skill perhaps that somebody thinks you shouldn’t have. That reading is an act of resistance, that writing is an act of resistance. That something that people might take for granted is denied by other people, and what do you do with that denial but you change it into activism.”
What we’re doing is we’re saying, ‘They were here.’
The diverse creativity and talent on display (all listed here) promises to introduce the people of Sheffield and beyond to a whole world of stories yet untold.
But the festival isn’t just about the here and now. Beyond the exhibition’s close on the 18th of August, seeing what comes next will be just as exciting.
“The reason that I want it to be a movement and not a project is because ‘project’ implies short term, and a movement is a continuation of something. It may not be me, and it shouldn’t be just me, really. It’s important to build in legacy and organise yourself around having to hand it over at some point. I’m so looking forward to that when others take it on.”
She added: “There are still untold stories of us in there we’re yet to find. It just means we have to keep digging, and we will keep digging.”
Made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported on brand and exhibition design by Peter & Paul, Dig Where You Stand takes place at five venues – Persistence Works (Yorkshire Artspace), Sheffield Cathedral, Moor Market, Sheffield Central Library and Winter Garden – from 20 July to 18 August. Free entry to all.