In the House of my Love

Brent Biennial is delighted to announce the full list of artists participating in this year’s edition, from July 8–September 11, 2022.  

Titled In the House of my Love, after a line in Ezra Green’s A Poem to the Nationalist Marcher (for the Queer People of Warsaw), curator Eliel Jones and the 2022 curatorial committee Adam Farah, Jamila Prowse and Abbas Zahedi bring together artists and community groups whose work explores the many meanings of homemaking: asking how, and why, the act of making home can be a form of resistance and survival within the context of hostile environments, including those of racism, homophobia, ableism, climate catastrophe and political austerity.

Curator Eliel Jones: “The artists and community groups that have been invited to participate in the second edition of the Brent Biennial all speak in various ways to the immigrant, queer and feminist traditions that have for a long time nurtured a sense of home in Brent and beyond. These are practices that are built within friendship, chosen families, love and collaboration, and they offer resolute antidotes to patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist, heteronormative and ableist systems of power”.

The Biennial takes place in three cluster locations in the south of the North West-London borough: Kilburn, Willesden and Harlesden. It features 12 artists’ projects, sited in 10 different venues and public spaces, by artists Arwa Aburawa & Turab Shah, Rasheed Araeen, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Rebecca Bellantoni, Ed Webb-Ingall, Linett Kamala, Mahmoud Khaled, Zinzi Minott, Shenece Oretha, Katarzyna Perlak, Mohammed Zaahidur Rahman and Sarah Rose. 

Four new public realm commissions are presented on billboards across the boroughs of Brent and Clapham in partnership with the organisations BuildHollywood and Studio Voltaire, by artists Sadia Pineda Hameed, Theo White, Jorell Bonnick and Kamile Ofoeme.

Further artists and practitioners from Brent and beyond will come to participate in the Biennial through an extended programme of activity with multiple local partners, including two curated projects by ActionSpace, London’s leading development agency for artists with learning disabilities, and Harlesden High Street, a project that champions contemporary art by local and international artists and centres work by people of colour.

Community-led commissions
In the House of my Love recognises and celebrates the gifts brought to light and shared by communities across Brent, through a collaborative commissioning process in partnerships with four key organisations: Asian Women’s Resource Centre, Sufra Foodbank and Kitchen North West London, Young Roots and Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust. Most of the community-led commissions, which are being developed in consultation with communities across the borough through a series of artist-facilitated workshops, will extend beyond the Brent Biennial dates, and be realised in the long-term life of Metroland Cultures. 

Public programme
Accompanying the Biennial exhibition will be a public programme of talks, workshops, screenings and family activities curated by Shama Khanna, Associate Curator for Public Programmes. The events will gather together community-building practices that centre creativity, healing, listening, showing up for others and asking bold questions, in what can otherwise be a dizzying political environment. The intention with the public programme is to nurture conversations and connections that can help to find one’s voice and feel supported in taking a stand against hostility.

Find out more about the Brent Biennial 2022.

For further information or images, please contact: Mary Doherty, Mary@sam-talbot.com / Jennifer Kibazo, Jennifer@sam-talbot.com