The Lines Between Us / I, Becoming You

Working across visual art practice, activism and academia, Ope Lori uses lens-based media to investigate politics of difference, often in relation to cultural and sexual identity. Her research-led practice, which includes writing as well as image-making, invites viewers to question power dynamics in both private and public spheres, routinely challenging societal stereotypes and myths.

In Lori’s new moving image works commissioned for Care | Contagion | Community – Self & Other, the artist explores her relationship with her father in The Lines Between Us (2020) and I, Becoming You (2020). Tracing their shared lineage of philosophy books, Lori creates a series of re-enactments in her family home in Essex, south-east England, to which she returned at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In these interconnected multi-screen moving image works, themes such as family, culture, and diaspora are playfully addressed alongside politics of identity, gender, class, privilege and education: The Lines Between Us features the artist in a double performance – as herself, and as her father – reciting passages from Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire’s seminal book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), while I, Becoming You juxtaposes archival footage of her father at home over a decade ago with a newly filmed re-staging in the same setting.

To contextualise this new art commission, we invited filmmaker Campbell X to speak with the artist about key themes in Lori’s commission and her wider artistic practice. This is published alongside a scholarly essay by Autograph’s senior curator Renée Mussai which situates Lori’s new film works in the context of Paulo Freire’s conception of changing human consciousness, dialogical action and performative re-enactment.