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My fathers left.
2023-24
Research project, workshops, text, sound.

5 minute excerpt: https://vimeo.com/946144888 or see below.

Sound piece comission for Borealis Festival for Experimental Music, Bergen. 2023.
Exhibition, Borealis Festival for Experimental Music, Bergen. 2024.
Reclaiming Narrratives workshop held with Touki as part of Borealis 2024.
Shown at Atelier Nord, April-May 2025.
Workshop with Miki Gebrelul, April 2025 at Atelier Nord.

Said Warya - synth composition
Conrad Parris – voice over
Isak Wingsternes – installation audio engineer, mixed in Duper Studio
Edison Hango - research assistance







My Fathers Left is a sound and video installation in the form of a poetic sonic essay, housed within a wooden listening structure whose shape is based on the stands used to hold boats on dry land. The work explores narratives of Black fatherhood from the perspective of children of the African diaspora.

The sonic essay begins with my own reflections on how British, Norwegian, and wider Western narratives shaped my relationship with my father and family history. It reveals how white supremacy’s privileges and oppressions appear within intimate bi- and multi-racial family stories and across generational migration. Played across five channels—a boombox mixtape and four speakers within the wooden structure—the work interweaves Caribbean calypso, soca, and reggae with a 1990s British police broadcast, storytelling, and writings by W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and others.

The project also unfolded through a series of workshops: in 2023, as part of the development of the work, I hosted workshops for BIPOC participants on the fears and vulnerability of storytelling, and in March 2024, a workshop with Touki, a Bergen-based Black arts collective, explored poetic tactics for reclaiming and repeating our own stories.  In April 2025, Miki Gebrelul joined me to host a workshop where we reimagined personal and shared histories within the context of those who have more than one homeland.

A prologue to the installation, co-written during the 2023 workshops, was performed at the 20th-anniversary opening of Borealis Festival 2023.

Commissioned and presented in collaboration with BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts.
Supported by Arts and Culture Norway, The Audio and Visual Fund & City of Bergen, Fond for Lyd og Bild. Part of New Perspectives for Action – a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.




Image from Atelier Nord, April 2025.
Image from Atelier Nord, April 2025.

Still from video.


Image from workshop with Miki Gebrelul, Atelier Nord, April 2025.







Image from Borealis, 2024.


Image from Borealis, 2024.


Image from workshop at Borealis, 2024.