Look What I Found with Remiiya Badru

Join us for a participatory show-and-tell session exploring Remiiya Badru’s creative research process as part of her residency at V&A East Storehouse. As current Artist in Residence for Cody Dock, a community-led social enterprise that works to conserve the banks of the River Lea in east London, its heritage, and cultural and educational programmes, she has been working towards an upcoming exhibition at Cody Dock, opening 19th September. An avid walker, listener and practitioner, Remiiya’s project involves exploring textiles, dyes and making-histories across geographies and time-periods, mapping global connections across material culture. 

Remiiya says of her water-based practice:  

‘Walking in tandem with bodies of water, especially the River Thames, has always been a spiritually transformative experience, where my walking practice is an act of reconnecting and reclaiming space, to narratives of memory, re-memory and healing. This liquid history flows as a continuum which synchronises the past, present and future connects all of us as a global conduit that carries our stories.’ 

Taking from her many explorations and practices around rivers, Remiiya developed her creative process of ‘Rhumblines’ – a metaphorical device that threads complex river-related and interwoven stories together – allowing her to navigate the often-hidden histories and silences of people and place. As witness to infrastructural change and flux in her local area, she explores these juxtapositions through memories of (post)colonialism, pre- and post-industrial change, cultural heritage, and natural and man-made environments. 

This event is part of our Look What I Found series, where artists share their encounters with the V&A collections and reveal the surprising, inspiring, and sometimes challenging objects they discover.