But we are mighty

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

But we are mighty documents a 2016 project by Rabab Ghazoul and Valley Kids, in which the artist worked with young people living in Penygraig and its surrounding areas in the South Wales Valleys. Together, they explored questions of landscape, local landmarks, memory, and agency. The project culminated in a series of text-based public artworks installed in twenty sites across the town. The texts evolved over an eight-month period of exploration around recordings and transcriptions of dialogues conducted within the group, with local people, and on visits and walks through urban and rural landscapes. The project was commissioned by Artes Mundi, RCT Homes and Valleys Kids, and supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

Born in Iraq, Rabab Ghazoul began making experimental theatre in Wales in the 1990s. Her work now incorporates video, installation, text, performance and site-specific work. She is the founder of the Cardiff-based organisation Gentle/Radical. At the intersections of art, culture, equalities and social justice, she has championed critical debates on decoloniality, power and privilege within Wales. Ghazoul was one of five artists to represent Iraq in the Iraqi Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Selected exhibitions and projects are ‘This Edible Map’, Gresol Festival of Art, Girona, Spain (2004); ‘The Suitcase Project’, Beaver Arts, Copenhagen (2007); solo exhibition ‘Can't Keep Up With Keeping You Down’, Chapter Arts Centre; and Pontcanna Fields Allotments, Cardiff (2008); ‘Intermission 2020’, off-site g39, Cardiff (2020).

Places

Subjects

car, street, terraced house, house

Materials & Techniques

photograph (as object name), digital photographic print, colour photograph

Artist

Rabab Ghazoul (1970 - )
Valleys Kids

Title

But we are mighty

Date

2016

Medium

digital photographic print

Dimensions

height: 53.0 cm; width: 76.1 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 22 March 2021

GAC number

18948