People:
People:
In February 2024, ICF’s Deputy Artistic Director Jessica Taylor interviewed artist Exodus Crooks for the YAC (Young Artists in Conversation) platform. The interview coincided with the tour of Exodus’ exhibition Epiphany (Temporaire) from ICF @ Block 336 in Brixton to Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
In the interview, they discuss the echoes of domestic spaces and the symbolism for the birth and death of ideas present in the works in the exhibition, they explore the question of what it means to “return home or return to self”, and they share insight into Exodus’ personal and artistic embrace of natural materials.
Interview excerpt:
The domestic spaces that you allude to will feel familiar to those who grew up in a Caribbean household, due to the symbolism and visual signals that you’ve embedded in the artworks. How does the Caribbean function in your work as a symbolic, reflective and generative space?
The Caribbean is a definitely a core part of my work as you have identified, and I use these symbols of the Caribbean as a code that only those who have feelings and experiences of displacement and diaspora are able to understand. There is something special that happens when somebody is able to recognise something in my work as a shared experience. That’s when I feel the work is active and fulfilling its purpose, when somebody else enters the space and has a nostalgic response to a piece. That emphasises one of the many powers of art, that it can transport you to previous lives, remind you of loved ones and moments of complexities, and can connect me with a stranger through our shared understanding and experience of a Caribbean culture, which is intimate and often complicated.
Epiphany (Temporaire) is curated by Orphée Kashala and was commissioned by Ort Gallery and ICF as part of our Emergence(y) project. The exhibition was first presented in Brixton as part of ICF’s residency at Block 336 (26 August – 17 September 2023) and then toured to Ikon Gallery in Birmingham (9 February – 21 April 2024).
View details of the exhibition at Ikon here.
