Centring on memory, what kinds of stories are told, and how those stories are passed down, it’s about what keeps us connected to family with entire lives abroad, and knowing them only through fragments.
Through projection, the ghost-like figures in the family archive gain a physical presence, and the sounds of notes, diaries, recipes, and voice memos collide to turn fragments into something whole again.
If I Could Get to You by Amaal Said is an audio-visual work that uses interviews, film and photography to explore the process of knowing our personal histories and documenting our experience of them.
During Brighton Digital Festival 2021, audiences were invited to peer through the windows of Enter Gallery by night, to experience projected visual collages, and a series of soundscapes accessible via QR code.
The work seeks to address the distances between people and places and speaks to the idea of not being close enough to the histories we’re told.
Amaal Said (b. 1995) is a Danish-born Somali photographer, and poet, based in London. Her photographs have been featured in Vogue, The Guardian and The New Yorker. She is concerned with storytelling and how best she can connect with people to document their stories.
Amaal won Wasafiri Magazine’s New Writing Prize for poetry in 2015. In 2017, she exhibited in Los Angeles, California. In 2018, her photography was featured in the fourth volume of African Lens and was exhibited in Accra, Ghana. She is a member of Octavia, poetry collective for women of colour, and a former Barbican Young Poet.
If I Could Get To You has been produced by Lighthouse and commissioned through Digital Democracies, a two-year programme led by Threshold Studios and supported by Arts Council England.
This work is also supported by Enter Gallery.
