Here by Dragons,  April 2024 

“HERE BY DRAGONS” was a term used by European cartographers to fill in the voids of unexplored territories with illustrations of dragons and other mythological creatures. Wherever there was the unknown, myths emerged to explain it.  When the ‘void’ became what is now known as Africa, the geographical information was considered both unknown and evolving. And, prior to the 17th century, this unknown was populated by myths, in the forms of imaginative illustrations of animals (Dürer's Rhinoceros), tales to deny authorship of bronze craftsmanship, or to define a culture as ‘barbaric’. Myths have a power to fill a void, and to fill it with a alternative narrative.  Not until the 17th century were European maps of Africa stripped of centuries of accumulated myth, misconception, and unsustainable guesswork, taking the mapping of Africa back to its ‘bare bones’ of substantiated fact, leaving the interior as a blank canvas, entitled the ‘Dark Continent’, a challenge to a new generation of explorers[1]. [read: colonisers] Yet, this blank canvas became the basis for a divisive mythology - terra nullius, the land belongs to no one – and myths evolved from its lands to its identities. Today, these geographic voids no longer exist, but the notion of dragons persists as a metaphor for the mythologies that are used to fill in the voids of identities. In the January 1985 issue of Playboy, an essay originally titled “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood” by James Baldwin shifted the meaning from where the dragons are to whom they represent. This exhibition isn't about mythical creatures, but about us as dragons — embodiments of mythologies, born from both violence and dreams, lies and truths, dilemmas and realities. For the ‘Black’ diaspora, the dragons dwell at the meeting point of two seas—between the coastlines of Britain and Africa. Here, a mythology shapes diasporic identities, navigating an idea of ‘home’ between paternal migrant narratives of a ‘homeland’ and stories of the lands we inhabit that feel as foreign. We are the dragons—part myth, part reality—existing before us and created by a* humanity itself. We shouldn't shy away from this void; it's where we breathe fire, transcend borders and ideals, and discover a language that can be transformative.’.

[1] Aaron Arrowsmith (1750 - 1823) a English cartographer. Created the ‘Africa To The Committee and Members of the British Association, 1802 republished in 1811 prior to the era of ‘New Imperialism’




Abstract Only
On Cartography - Mapping identities that reside beyond borders, August 2023

Cartography is not passive; it is not merely a visual observation of the world. It is active. It has the power to shape the world too. Whether an instrument to conquest or politics, maps transform cultures as much as culture transform maps. We have been taught to understand countries as if they were fixed, unchanging and eternal, and so we have been taught to define ourselves in the same manner. But, countries had disappeared – Yugoslavia; appeared -- South Sudan; appeared and then disappeared - United Arab Republic ; Some are even younger than I am - Somalia. Countries appear hardly the right way of mapping the human being. The inherent lexicon to situate our identity based within countries prescribes a limiting fiction, the singular colonial lines, over reality: the plurality of human experience. The question it leaves us with is, is there a cartography system that maps geography based on human experience too? Referencing alternative ways of cartography with particular reference to African Cartographers, I outline the results of four examples of cartography - 1. Mapping with connections; 2. mapping with a direction; 3. mapping through a collective lexicon and; 4. mapping based on time (not distance) - that together construct a framework where we can depict the experiences and positions of the mapmaker. And, I address four tools that hold the power to make human experience a valuable unit of measurement and the amalgamation of these tools offer a cartography system equipped to map identities not so bounded by colonial borders.




Abstract Only
How to’ live out of your imagination, not just your history - Five disobedient practices for diasporic architectural students
October 2021


It approaches three years marking the murder of George Floyd. At the time, a seismic shift in the architecture paradigm procceded to follow, thrusting individuals whoses double conciousness seperated their ‘self’ with their ‘architect’ into the forefront. To be both ‘Black’ and an ‘Architect’ was now to confront an education that either we had to riot with its resistant or accept its pedagogy steeped ignorance. Taxed with the onus to either alter or disprove a narrative of the once singular architectural education, the daily studio day-to-day was now a daily act of protest. Our projects were now political. Even if you didn’t intend it to be, they were politicised. One’s choice to do or to not do projects in ‘Africa’, or about ‘Blackness’  held weight, not just for the project itself, but for our identities, our mentors, our academic units, and our institutions. Architectural exploration became arduous for the ‘others’.   At the core, each architectural student is made up of a dichotomy between their ‘self’ and their ‘education’. The prior, is built from one's cultural heritage and personal experience, it is what determines the questions one chooses to ask. The latter, defined by our education, commands in whose library you choose (or restricted) to find the answer.  For diasporic architectural students, frequently their authentic questions don’t yet have authentic answers in this education. And whilst it is as true ‘its not [our] job to educate you’, the new young diasporic generation are left burdened with additional non-curricular work, left to spell out evident architectural past to prove decolonial ideas of architecture exist and work over hollow rebuttal. While the refrain 'it's not our job to educate you' holds true, the burden falls disproportionately on the shoulders of the new generation of diasporic architects. We're tasked with not only articulating the glaring omissions in architectural history but also defending decolonial ideas against dismissive rebuttals. Even when a we students  managed to push our innovative ideas forward, securing their approval for our vision, you find themselves buried under the weight of architectural etiquette. By the time the green light is given, countless folio pages have been filled, months have slipped away, and there's often scant time left to live out our imagination beyond their ficitious history. As a tutor now, I look back at this time with more hindsight and want to say ‘To breach boundaries into our imagination calls for a little bit of disobedience’. As a tutor too, I remember the copious amount of reading we do, so in short, here are the five practices, do with them what you will, I used to bypass the British pedagogy of teaching which allowed me to live out my imagination









Abstract Only