By Nina Edge. This article was adapted from the speech Nina gave at #FiLiA2021 during the Creative Resistance Panel.

Once I made a chandelier out of crystal glass. It hangs as in the Turner Prize-winning Granby Winter Garden, throwing rainbows onto the plants below. If it appeared in architectural journals (which it did) it might appear to be a luxury expression of hoarded capital and colonially extracted wealth, as many chandeliers are.  But this artwork The Shared Habitat (2018) hangs in a terraced house in Liverpool’s Granby. A place famously rescued by creative neighbourhood activism where street planting, community markets, and painting bricked-up windows yielded the magical power to escape demolition. The same fate threatened my home in the Welsh Streets where we also met the bulldozers with cultural resistance and saved our homes.  

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Similarly, self-protecting action can be seen in a series 58 of felt pen drawings. Every image depicts conflict. People dominate each other through their phones, political opponents shout into each other’s mouths, and dislocating jaws engulf the voiceless. Ritual Bombardment in the Charnel House of Power (2019) was made after I was bounced from a temporary teaching role at Liverpool John Moore’s University. This was followed by a further attempt to attack my career, when and the chandelier at Granby Winter Garden had attracted positive press. A couple of TRA-art critics published an essay calling for me to be boycotted. In response to this attempted cancellation I will confirm that I’m not cancelled or even delayed. I have artwork and services for sale and for free so contact me if you too want to boycott-the-boycott and be culturally resistant.

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The cancellation attempt could not erase a body of work produced over 34 years. Work like Snakes and Ladders, shown to #FiLiA2021 on the cover of the late Maud Sulter’s Passion; Discourses on Black Women’s Creativity. (1987) The life-sized image of a woman with a poem about Orientalism was one of many I made to manifest of brown-skinned women as self-governing in visual culture. This work and other batik work such as Bhopal (1990) and The First Time She went to America (1992) used ‘ethnic’ and low-status materials to interrogate power. One work refers to a chemical spill by Union Carbide in India in 1984, the other depicts me being mistaken for Latina while travelling through Miami in 1989. My passport was confiscated during the incident. Depicting, and mocking this moment was cultural resistance - and it was pure joy.

Nothing Is Fireproof  (2002) is a hoarding print in Arabic and Hebrew shown on street billboards. Use of  Arabic and Hebrew script created a funding glitch even at the time of making. Attempts were made to remove it from sight. This work, along with Terra  (2003) a camouflage textile series, marked the infliction of war on Iraq. Dessert storm battledress adorned with appliqued world-maps reference imperial survey and betray tactics. Squaddies fatigues joined at the hip, camouflage Hijabs,  post 911 planes, and escaped floral motifs haunt the series. The work is increasingly controversial as petro-power wanes.  Showing the work again would take an organization capable of cultural resistance.  A rare and beautiful thing in 2021.

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The Guantanamo-orange boiler suits branded with Habeas Corpus (2007), in black machine embroidery continue the use of low status production methods. Ordinary materials subvert the hierarchies of Fine Art practice whilst being easily read by non-art trained audiences. One October night  a group of Afghan Women, myself and a legal advisor wore the boiler suits to the Turner Prize launch at Tate Liverpool where we were photographed in front of the Nathan Coley artwork that read “ There Will Be No Miracles Here” .

A photo of this happy picture mix was taken by a  member of the public because our camera crew were asked to leave.

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We overheard conversations as we passed. Talk of Abu Graib, Guantanamo and Bad King John under whose rule the writ of Habeas Corpus emerged confirming that if the king/state imprison people, they shouldn’t be disappeared, but tried and charged. A misty protection as recipients of orange boilers suit can testify.  Translated as ‘I have a body’ the work finds new resonance in the current era of body denial. Like other pieces, it may be rejected as too distasteful for public space.

The schiffli embroidered net curtain Nothing Is Private (2006) was made in defence of a home threatened with demolition. It sits with other pieces I  located work outside the gallery palaces, seen from the street or domestic space where women,  particularly feminist practitioners have long drawn attention and held fort.

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Nina Edge trained as a ceramicist in Cardiff and became known for subversive use of craft processes in shows with Black British artists in the 1980s. Initially known for scaled-up drawing, subversive ceramics and radical textiles she expanded into public art and performance. To learn more, visit her website.