In Karelia, archaeologists once found a child buried on the wing of a swan. Developing this image and its wider resonances, Wing Cradle incorporates harnesses from a horse involved in war between Finland and Russia as well as a feathered structure made by the artist’s mother, Salame Hökkä, and aunt, Terttu Hökkä, identical twins and artisan textile workers. The structure incorporates thousands of white feathers (by-products from the manufacturing of down jackets and duvets), hand-stitched onto cotton to create a talisman of protection and love.

Wing Cradle is a collaborative piece installed inside Portobello’s disused bottle kiln during Art Walk Porty 2023.
Soundscape: composer, multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper
Lived experience testimonies: Zainah Adnan

The installation also takes place as part of Scottish Archaeology Month

Dr Henna Asikainen is a multidisciplinary, socially engaged artist, whose work questions human relationships with nature, and the complex social and ecological issues that emerge. Many of Asikainen’s recent projects have been built around communal experiences within different landscapes and have examined issues including migration, climate justice and unequal access to nature. Her work consistently advocates for a philosophy of friendship and radical hospitality.

Asikainen has exhibited widely and undertaken numerous residencies both nationally and internationally. Her most recent projects include Future Pasts at Gallery North, Newcastle (2023); Delicate Shuttle, Communities and Change exhibition at Newcastle Contemporary Art as part of the Memory Studies Association conference (2023); and Omens at BALTIC 39, Newcastle (2020). Originally from North Karelia, Finland, Henna now lives in Newcastle, UK.

Zainah Adnan is a creative individual, survivor, alternative medicine specialist and a single mother from Yemen.  Zainah and her son are currently seeking asylum.  Zainah met Henna while she was housed in a hotel in Newcastle. 

Erland Cooper is a Scottish, composer, produçer & multi-instrumentalist originally from Orkney. As a solo artist, he has released four acclaimed studio albums, with 4 additional companion LPs & multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home, as well as themes of nature, people, place & time. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration & contemporary electronic elements.

LIST OF WORKS

September 2023 during Art Walk Porty:
Installation, Portobello Kilns, Bridge Street –
soundscape: composer, multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper
lived experience testimonies: Zainah Adnan (Yemen)
Artist Talk by Henna Asikainen

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ENDLESS/BELLY suggests an excavation of Scotland’s role in shaping the Black Atlantic, while considering the experiences of being Black in Scotland in the past, present and future. The project sees the development of three new live art micro commissions by Edinburgh-based artists Tanatsei Gambura, Khadea Santi and Lisa Williams. 

Ruwona has also conceived a programme of six films by Black artists making work about water and is sharing new writing.

This programme forms Art Walk Porty’s first curatorial residency and is supported additionally by funding from City of Edinburgh’s Council Diversity & Inclusion Fund, and The William Syson Foundation. 

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Portobello Prom 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

ABOUT EACH PROJECT:

Salt Wounds
Artist Khadea Santi presents Salt Wounds as both a remembering and healing work. The event incorporates salt mined from Lake Retba, Dakar, a peninsula in Senegal and the westernmost point of Africa. This salt holds histories of no return, the Transatlantic slave trade, colonisation and Black Ecologies. 

Simultaneously a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, Salt Wound invites participants to use tinfoil to encase ceramic pieces in salt, then to unearth them from the ashes transformed into a myriad of different patterns and colours. The work also speaks on pyromancy (meaning divination by means of fire) and water as a place for cleansing and mourning.

Twisted Dream
Lisa Williams’ Twisted Dream is a poetic pilgrimage that prompts participants to take their minds back to Portobello in 1863. Enslavement in the Caribbean has ended 30 years previously, and Elizabeth Baillie McIntosh wakes from a feverish dream. The Scottish widow of a plantation owner in the tiny island of Carriacou, Elizabeth is now living a life of piety in Portobello. She becomes obsessed by the nightly visions of the cribo, a snake she had killed on the plantation, and begins to walk in her sleep. 

Drawing on personal family connections and wider historical entwinings, the poems explore our own capacity for self and collective healing. Williams invites participants to join in a poetic pilgrimage around Portobello together.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura’s When We Come Out of the Water bears witness to the fatal encounter of Black bodies with bodies of water in the wake of colonial and imperialist violence. From trans-Atlantic slavery routes to refugee migration channels on the Mediterranean, labour under modern capitalism continues to inter Black people within marine ecologies. 

Gambura is inviting people to bring fresh flowers to the steps of Portobello bandstand for a two-day vigil in honour of Black lives lost at sea. Constructed as an ‘organic memorial’ using funereal flora and the built structures on Portobello Promenade, this is an opportunity for communal grieving through the death practices indigenous to Black communities: ceremony and ritual. It acknowledges that Black and indigenous people will continue to be the worst affected by the climate emergency. 

When We Come Out of the Water Tanatsei Gambura, Joppa Steps 2022 – Image: Jon Davey

Commissioned Works & Live Art:

Exhibition
SALT Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Art Walk Hub & Portobello Promenade 2022
Salt Works Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, mote102, 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh 2023

Live Art 2022
Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage
Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, guides a performative walk through Portobello, exploring connections between Scotland and the Caribbean.

Salt Wounds
Khadea Santi leads a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, including salt clay firing and durational performance on Portobello Beach.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura invites people to come together, bringing flesh flowers in honour of Black lives lost at sea, Steps by Joppa Bandstand.

Film programme
curated by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona: Tabita Rezaire, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Tulani Hlalo, Wanuri Kahiu, Zebib K. Abraham, Deborah Jack
Portobello Promenade, by Pipe Street

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

A trio of texts by Harvey Dimond, unravels real and imagined oceanic journeys in South Africa, Scotland and Barbados:
I. Nobody Dies of Old Age in the Ocean on Tanatsei Gambura
II. Maps on Khadea Santi
III. Pray for a Life Without a Plot on Lisa Williams

Available to read on MAP

Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage Lisa Williams, Portobello 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

About the artists:

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish- Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and creative programmer. They are interested in how Afrofuturism and ecology can meet through storytelling and by listening to the landscape. Using water as a site for thinking, Natasha investigates entwinements of Scottish history and Black Geographies via their transatlantic connections. Through their investigations, they are also seeking to understand how healing and improved wellbeing are impacted when we explore our relationships with our environment.

Tanatsei Gambura is a poet and artist who connects lived experience, geographies and memories to create multimedia works of exchange. Tanatsei’s commission considers water as a space of birth, life and death, and proposes communal grieving as a method for healing.

Through collaborative approaches to making, Khadea Santi uses workshops, clay, sound, performance and film within her practice. For her commission, Khadea continues to use elements of collaboration as a method for making through conversation, fire and clay.

Lisa Williams is the founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association where she runs educational, artistic and heritage projects. Lisa’s work for Art Walk Projects expands on her Black History Walking tours and research into Scotland’s relationship with the Caribbean, this time using contemporary art to tell these stories.

Salt Wounds Khadea Santi, Portobello Beach 2022 – Image: Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

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IMAN TAJIK developed a two-year residency project working with Art Walk Projects, beginning in 2020 with a durational performance ‘Where the Body Meets the Land’ on Portobello Beach as part of our socially distanced All At Sea programme.

Iman’s own experience of crossing geographical borders fuels much of his practice, with a strong desire to activate debate around the impacts of barriers and boundaries, including those also socially constructed. This series of site specific work resulting from his 2021 residency with Art Walk Projects responded to the locality of Portobello, situated on the edge of the city, bringing its position and relationship to the city centre, into focus.

Iman Tajik is an Iranian artist based in Glasgow whose work is anchored in a strong social interest connected to international movements for social change. His practice focusses on migration and freedom of movement bridging the gap between art and activism. imantajik.com

‘I Had a Dream‘ (Morton Street, Beach Groyne) 4th/5th Sept 2021
marked the many lost and unrecorded deaths at sea from migrants and refugees arriving through treacherous sea journeys, in search of a better life to another land many miles from their own, and more increasingly than ever, to UK shores. This momentary intervention (installed for the first weekend only of Art Walk Porty 4/5 Sept) referenced such journeys.

It was accompanied by a film from Tajik detailing the numbers of lost lives and missing migrants crossing by sea to the UK in 2020.

‘Welcome to the Border‘ (Promenade, near to Figgate Street) 4th to 12th Sept 2021 – introduced a temporary border at Portobello Promenade that generated debate and discussion around the notion of the border, as a line that divides and separates, rather than welcomes. 

Tajik invites the visitor to consider the crossing of the border. 
He calls for conversation through this work around how the boundary, literal or imagined, effects our sense of welcome, of being welcomed, with the divisive nature the border instils. 

The work also recalls Portobello’s own history around its boundaries; of a once separate geographical area, outwith the City of Edinburgh.

Border Sharing Dinner 
Portobello Promenade, Sept 2021

A public sharing of food across a temporary border line on Portobello Promenade Edinburgh. Commissioned by Art Walk Projects as part of Iman Tajik’s 2021 ‘Welcome to Portobello’ Residency. With thanks to all participants. Poetry ‘Bani Adam’ (Persia) from Saadi Shirazi’s book the ‘Gulistan’ (chapter 1, story 10, completed in 1258 AD) – spoken by Jane Lewis. Food – Judith Lamb. Videography – Rachel McBrinn.

‘Aliens Welcome Here?‘ (Portobello Kilns, Bridge Street) 11th/12th Sept 2021
On approaching the structure around Portobello’s kiln (waiting to be refurbished), we perhaps think of a UFO landed from outer space. What may first appear as Tajik’s playful take on this familiar local site, at the same time invites us to look again, and to reconsider the terminology around “alien” and its relationship to immigration and displacement. Dictionary definitions of alien include “a creature from another planet” as well as “belonging to another country”. The UK Aliens Act of 1905 declared that “undesirable immigrants” be denied entry to Britain. This act was amended in 1919, however the British Nationality Act of 1981 still defines an alien as a person who is not a British citizen. This powerful & compelling work by Tajik, brings sharp attention into focus around the use of such dehumanising language.

View accompanying images relating to this installation here

Above images – credit: Jon Davey

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