Contagion: Colour on the Front Line

Aida Silvestri creates mixed media artworks that challenge the status quo of stigma, prejudice and social injustice, often highlighting issues of race, class, identity and health. Her socially engaged activist practice is characterised by multi-layered modes of working that often combines text, image and experimental techniques to manipulate the photographic surface.

For this new artist commission, Silvestri responded to the idea of Care | Contagion | Community — Self & Other by taking the charged political rhetoric adopted by both mainstream media and politicians during the pandemic as a point of departure – linking phrases such as ‘we are all in this together’ or ‘fighting against an invisible enemy’ with imperial narratives and wartime sentiments. For Silvestri, these slogans not only recall her formative years living in Eritrea under authoritarian communist regimes, but they also expose striking parallels between Britain’s imperial past and present. Using exposure as both metaphor and device, Silvestri highlights the devastating impact of Covid-19 on frontline workers of colour by ‘infecting’ her digital drawing collage and portrait works with commodity substances such as coffee, tea, sugar, or cocoa, creating coloured coronal splashes on the artworks – further amplifying the notion of ‘contagion’.

To contextualise this new art commission, we invited scholar Anthony Downey to write a short essay reflecting on the themes raised by Silvestri’s series, critically considering the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on ethnic minority communities and rhetoric of inclusion. This is published alongside an in-depth conversation between the artist and Autograph's senior curator Renée Mussai.