My work largely deals with identity, exploring facets of selfhood through different cultural signifiers. I’m not sure whether it’s a hangover from various lockdowns, but I have been really drawn to ideas of containment. I have been inspired by The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K Le Guin. In the essay, Le Guin presents a theory of human evolution that the first human tool was not a weapon but a receptacle, something that made it possible to collect more than could be held in the hands. As such, the container is the hero of this story. My recent works foreground this experience of the body as vessel through collected tapestry fragments

I begin by creating drawings in soft pastel or pencil which are translated via digital jacquard loom to create the tapestry pieces, which are then hand-embroidered and beaded. Embroidery really forges a direct relationship between line and thread; in terms of mark-making, satin-stitch embroidery is hatching with silk, layering to create tone.

I’m really drawn to ritualistic methods of display from altarpieces to shrines and how these can function as portals. I suppose my interest in symbolism came from trying to define what you recognise when you see yourself in an object or idea. I’d always come home with full pockets; shells, stones, wood, glass, textiles. The talismanic power of objects fascinates me, their ability as archetypal images to illicit this subconscious response. It becomes a personal cosmology that functions a little like a self portrait, drawing from your experience and collected subjects.

During the first lockdown, I was sketching constantly but really struggling to complete work or expand beyond my sketchbook. I realised how much I wanted to interrogate my relationship with drawing. I’d never trained and I thought a global reset feels as pertinent a time as any to start again. I’ve now been studying at the Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School in London since January and it’s been really illuminating. It feels like unlearning as much as it does learning; correcting biases, understanding your instincts, being offered new ways of seeing. I am craving newness internally and externally, and slowly seeing changes present themselves in my visual language is really rewarding.

I was really moved by Patricia Belli’s work at Tate Modern, Billie Zangewa at NEON Athens, Helen Frankenthaler at Gagosian and Lenore Tawney at Alison Jacques, London over the last couple of months. I’ve been reading Isabel Allende, and revisiting JG Ballard short stories (The Day of Forever has a particular potency after the last year). Ever-present favourites include Ursula K Le Guin as mentioned, Octavia Butler, Maggie Nelson and Toni Morrison.

I think that a mixed race identity often involves reconciling the different worlds and contexts you are from, and the elements of symmetry in some of my compositions reflect a desire for harmony between these facets. The language of natural hair carries through my work in different mediums; considering the parallels with silk thread in embroidery and in drawn ribbons and flourishes. Curls are everywhere. The cultural associations of weaving and embroidery are also interwoven with ideas of the feminine.

I move at a fairly glacial pace, but I would say a few weeks from start to finish for each tapestry piece.

I’m working towards some projects for 2022 that I’m really excited about. I am currently exhibiting a new series of embroidered tapestries and soft pastel drawings in Psychic Anemone at Cob Gallery in London [until 18th December] alongside Bea Bonafini and Zoe Williams. The show takes its name from the protagonist of Tai Shani’s text Our Fatal Magic and draws together multidisciplinary artistic approaches to the transcendental image through ritual, magic, gender, mythology, spirituality, eroticism and sensuality.