Camara Taylor

Camara creates still and moving images, texts, installations, events and discursive programmes that act as moments of stasis amidst sprawling research. Ambivalence, low-frequency objection, mad methodologies, ontokinetics, spatial relations, the rumor of the ocean, the construction of land and landscape, play with images, objects, events and words situated in the midst of black life in Scotland and beyond are recurring elements throughout their practice. Drawing on diatribe, reel and rambling, Camara works from collapse and bad emotions, towards an unravelling of –[1]

During their residency, Camara Taylor continues their ongoing interest in the life, work and death of painter Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872) in the context of explorations of Black geographies, embodiments and madness. In an approach situated at the point where preconceptions disintegrate, the encounter with archives and the act of tracing Duncanson's movements through Montreal will serve as an anchor for Camara Taylor.  This research will be used to stage various experiments and multimedia works that oscillate between the particularities of the life of this historical and cultural figure, in relation to the wider spatializations of the Black diaspora. The research-production takes up rumours, myths, representations of contested landscapes and archival objects to think through and against the matters of multi-scalar violence that continue to shape black life, as well as strategies of resistance that oppose it.

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Biography

Camara Taylor is based in Glasgow. Recent projects include backwash, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2022) ; a rant! a reel!, Cubitt Gallery, London; holus-bolus, 17th Edinburgh Art Festival; IMG_5917, with Sulaïman Majali, Artists’ Moving Image Festival and suspiration! commissioned by The Newbridge Project, Gateshead, and recipient of a 2021 Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival New Cinema Award. Camara has undertaken residencies across Scotland, and screened their moving image works across the UK and internationally. They have participated in programmes including Satellites (Collective Gallery, 2020-2022); Curatorial Directions (MAC Belfast, 2019) and Constellations (UP Projects/ FTHo, 2017-18). Camara was a Committee Member at Transmission Gallery from 2016 to 2018 and Programme Coordinator of the Race, Rights & Sovereignty series at The Glasgow School of Art from 2017 until 2021. They are currently a member of Collective Text.

Recent exhibitions

2022	Backwash, solo exhibition, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK When bodies whisper, group exhibition, Timespan, Helmsdale, UK Körper Barrikaden, group, Teile2o46, Berlin, DE
2021	a rant! a reel!, solo exhibition, Cubitt Gallery, London, UK slow breath, duo exhibition, NewBridge Project, Gateshead, UK