One Leather (2023), Two Meals (2023), Three Garlands (2023), Four Sacks (2023), Five Players (2023)

Acrylic on canvas

40cm x 50cm

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“Under the Cloth” is a series consisting of five acrylic paintings illustrating dream-like domestic scenes exploring the lives of migrants in the East London rag trade most active between the 1970s and early 2000s. 

 

The themes of these scenes encompass motherhood, death, craft, migration and leisure & community organising. The work moves beyond narratives of economic necessity- a hegemonic tool that disempowers and flattens the lives of working class migrants. There is also a dynamic representation of femininities and wider gender identity across age, religion and race to problematize the label of “seamstress” as evoking any singular presentation. Amid patchwork landscapes of humour, grief, solidarity, love, skill, exploitation, pride and shame, there is both dignity and hardship in ways that are challenging to straightforwardly celebrate or commemorate.  

 

The research into this series is largely based on oral history recordings with my Ma, Rowshonara Rahman, who worked in the East End rag trade following her migration to the UK in the 1980s. This is also significantly supplemented by “I Sewed, I Sewed and I Sewed”, an oral history project by Stepney Community Trust published in 2022.

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Conceived for City of Burrows at Phillida Reid, 10 March - 15 April 2023.

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Photo: Ben Westoby