GOD-POCKET
(2023)
![GOD-POCKET poster front.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ca94eb_4f3f773bd9da44dbbf11516f7099093f~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_295,h_418,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/GOD-POCKET%20poster%20front.png)
![GOD-POCKET poster back.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ca94eb_32442f4c537941a3b5f64fa2b0688425~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_295,h_418,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/GOD-POCKET%20poster%20back.png)
Group show GOD-POCKET opened at Eastside Projects, Birmingham from June – July 2023. Exhibiting artists included Trixiebella Suen, Tesha Murrain-Hernandez, Neoliberalizard, and Yusuf Dongo. Curated by Jaz Morrison.
The GOD-POCKET is an Afrospeculative ‘firmament’ situated between time and space; a crossroads between the seen past and unseen future; a pocket universe where Otherness learns to become morphological.
Identity is an ongoing topic in Black British discourse, with themes of displacement and belonging fuelling concerns around self-actualisation.
Tangible routes to belonging can be hindered due to individualism, as well as fractures in cultural and local communities. If personhood is more a relational process than an inherent quality (aka, if understanding our environment can help us find ourselves), then obscured connections to the past could leave people unequipped and unsupported to tackle the present.
This isn’t new, or specific to Black Brits. The feeling of being ‘other’ (or 'different') is common in displacement. This feeling is compounded by additional factors like ableism, where lacking access harms community inclusion. For many Black disabled people, the margins of society are a 'liminal space' or 'heterotopia' for them to be discarded into and forgotten.
Black Britain is a growing culture within the Black African Diaspora. But our formative milestones risk being undermined by bigotry and capitalism. These thoughts – from around the diaspora – have highlighted a need to create and hijack ‘liminal spaces’ within the public sphere for social practice.
Otherness has morphological potential when freed from the policing societal gaze. We can be whatever we want to be, once we know who we are.