In Seven Days… was created from my experience on President Obama’s 2008 campaign trail and the final images are the visual legacy of this historic moment. However this work also represents a much wider story; a constantly evolving discussion on race, heritage, identity, and representation. For International Women’s Day I wanted to highlight some of the ways I have explored gender in this work, and particular my own role as a female artist.

In 2007, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, I created a portrait in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International called House Slave – Field Slave. The imagery was inspired by artefacts and extraordinary photos provided by the organisation. I created a large scale altarpiece triptych, using oil paint to create iconic imagery of feet. I wanted to reflect on how enslavement strips a person of their identity so I decided not to include the rest of their figure or faces to reflect this loss of bodily autonomy. I used objects, symbols, and other semiotic markers to capture the diverse experiences of contemporary slavery such as bonded labour, human trafficking and forced marriages.