Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell at 87 Gallery, Hull 

Drawing inspiration from the longstanding traditions of mask-making and masquerade in the Caribbean and Nepal, Brixton-based artist Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell creates evocative landscapes that explore her dual heritage. Incorporating sound, moving image, oral history, poetry and analogue photography, her practice centres matrilineal mythologies and lived experience, whilst interrogating universal themes.

Folklore Imaginary is a part-personal, part-cultural mythology, woven using oral histories and intergenerational memories of migration. It explores the fluidity of the artist’s transcultural identity. The liberation from having “one self” is toyed with through wearable avatars that utilise the traditional techniques of ritual mask-making in Nepal. Produced collaboratively with sound artist Cil, sitarist Tommy Khosla and multi-instrumentalist Buster Woodruff-Bryant, the audio-visual pieces Effigy for a Black Soldier and Protector of the Children sonically respond to both Eastern and Western folk tradition.

Find out more HERE.

Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell was selected for New Contemporaries in 2021.

Folklore Imaginary coincides with New Contemporaries 2022, which is being hosted in Hull at the Ferens Art Gallery and Humber Street Gallery from 23 September to 27 November 2022.