ROOTS & RITES

A Sense of Belongingis the exhibition I curated for Roots & Rites, a festival centered on tattooing as cultural heritage. Working with founder Itonisha, I built the show around BIPOC and diasporic perspectives, tracing 53 tattoo traditions across eight regions and thousands of years: rites of passage, spiritual protection, social identity, medicine, and the tools used to make the marks.

The dynamic was intentional. They would build and I would destroy.The starting point was personal. Itonisha and I both grew up with questions about belonging, from opposite sides of colonial history. Many of the traditions we researched were disrupted by colonialism, religion, and state suppression. Much of what was documented now sits behind paywalls and institutional access restrictions, out of reach for the descendants of these communities. The exhibition makes that knowledge visible and accessible, and says plainly who has been left out of its telling.

My role covered the full curatorial process. I defined the thematic scope, sourced archival materials, designed the spatial layout, wrote the imagery descriptions and the curatorial text, and oversaw exhibition logistics through to installation. The festival drew around 800 attendees.