Filmmakers Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah, founders of the Brent-based project Other Cinemas, have been commissioned to produce a moving image work in response to Brent Biennial ‘22 theme of ‘In The House Of My Love’. Informed by interviews with first-generation migrants living in the borough and beyond, this work weaves together the lives of multiple characters as they confront inherited ideas of belonging.

From the severed connection to a motherland following the death of a parent, to the generational experience of displacement, or the feeling of nostalgia for a place and time forever out of reach, I Carry It With Me Everywhere explores how migration results in moments of rupture from which new understandings of home and belonging may emerge.

The UK government’s antagonistic relationship with migrant communities forms the quietly simmering backdrop of the film, as communities are forced to come to terms with the reality that not everyone can find safety and belonging in the nation state. This reality was most recently demonstrated by the Windrush scandal, as well as the new proposals brought forward by the Nationality and Borders Act, through which the government plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, or to strip non-white British people of their citizenship without warning.

Shot in black and white, Aburawa and Shah’s artist film seeks to convey the timeless and ongoing search for answers in response to the experience of these hostile environments, which are familiar to many migrant communities in the UK. In the process, they seek to subvert the idea that belonging is an inherently positive experience. What if a moment of belonging here, in the UK, is also a moment of losing belonging somewhere else? What if that shift also requires giving up a more rooted space of belonging for a precarious one, one that is always at risk of being taken away? This artist film evokes this deep sense of loss, whilst also honouring what people continually manage to build and create in resistance.

The artist film will be screening every Thursday- Sunday at 12-6pm at Design Works, Harlesden, London as part of the Brent Biennial 2022. The Biennial is taking place from 7 July - 11 September 2022.

The Guardian reviewed the Brent Biennial and our work:

“Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah’s beautifully shot film I Carry It With Me Everywhere explores the complex webs of duty, danger, belonging and family ties that keep migrants suspended between two worlds. A totemic work of this biennial, it is locally made by film-makers who run a youth programme.”

Read the full review here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/12/london-biennial-review-linett-kamala