"Exploring friendship, anti-racism and feminism" at Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion

A spokesman said: “Removing the boundaries between process and outcome, artists Anna Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders bring together social practice, visual art and performance in their interdisciplinary project, Up in Arms, to create meaningful dialogue amidst the complexity of interracial friendships.

“Up in Arms is an ongoing collaboration initiated by Nabirye and Saunders in 2016. In each new context the artists start with a series of sessions in which they extend an invitation to black women to bring a friend of a different race and together re-create and re-embody the iconic 1971 portrait of activists and friends Dorothy Pitman-Hughes and Gloria Steinem. This process becomes a ritual that opens up the space for transformative conversations around female friendship, feminism and anti-racism.

“As part of their latest iteration of Up in Arms, commissioned by De La Warr Pavilion, Nabirye and Saunders have invited black women with a friend of their choice from across the local area – Bexhill, Hastings and St Leonards – to participate. The resulting documentation will be incorporated into an expansive exhibition comprising photography, film and archival material in DLWP’s First floor gallery, and will be the most ambitious presentation of the project to date.

“The Rooftop Foyer space will be transformed into a space for gathering where visitors can engage in conversation, reflection and explore further reading and audio materials.

“A new publication, conceived as a handbook for intersectional collaboration, is currently in development and due to be published in spring 2023. A rich compendium of images, conversations, archival material and special contributions will guide readers in exploring questions around friendship, anti-racism and feminism. Part art book, part field guide, the publication is a resource that will document techniques and methods applied in the social practice element of the project, providing readers with the tools for their own social circles and beyond.

“As much as this book will serve as an archive, it will also, like the exhibition at DLWP and wider Up in Arms project, be a generative space for knowledge sharing with the potential to lead to new dialogues and intersectional collaborations.”

The venue is also staging Up In Arms: Live Cinema Performance, Sunday, May 7.

“Timed to coincide with the exhibition, the artists will present a live cinema performance in DLWP’s auditorium. Working from the entire Up in Arms archive of documentation and film, Nabirye and Saunders will edit audio and visuals separately and play them in sync for the first time in front of an audience. As they appear in front of the moving image work, their performance is a choreographic response to the synchronicity and discord of this live edit.”

Tickets available via dlwp.com.