A Bristol billboard takeover by artist ASMAA JAMA

Published On: September 6th, 2023

A Bristol billboard takeover by artist ASMAA JAMA inspired by ‘All About Love’ by bell hooks

Asmaa Jama, Except This Time Nothing Comes Back From The Ashes. Courtesy of Asmaa Jama and Gouled Ahmed. 7 – 10 SEPTEMBER, BRISTOL

6 SEPTEMBER, 1pm: Photocall

West Street, Bristol, BS2 0BX

9 SEPTEMBER, 1-3pm: Outdoor performance followed by artist tour

West Street, Bristol, BS2 0BX

Billboard and advertising spaces across Bristol will be taken over by Bristol-based multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and writer Asmaa Jama for one weekend in September for the final instalment in BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s first major curatorial and artist commission, ‘All About Love’.

Taking place across five UK cities between April – September 2023, the ‘All About Love’ project champions artists who are either born in those cities or live and work there, with the commissions taking inspiration from a quote from All About Love, the groundbreaking book, published in 2000, by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author, bell hooks. Bristol will host the final edition of the ‘All About Love’ project, following city-wide billboard takeovers in Birmingham, Brighton, Glasgow and Manchester this summer. The project is curated by Zarina Rossheart.

Asmaa Jama’s

Asmaa Jama’s All About Love commission builds on from their film ‘Except this time nothing returns from the ashes’ (2022) that was shot in Addis Ababa in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed. Combining poetry and music, the film explores how national canons are constructed and can be corrupted. The work is a documentation of the artist’s interactions with their family’s photographic collections and archives, placing emphasis on self-portraiture and its ability to combat erasure. The film is commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol and is on view at the gallery until the 10th September 2023.

The work for All About Love is a selection of photographic stills from the film captioned with fragments of poetic text. The images feature scenes where the characters face the camera, and question the viewer’s gaze and complicity in their erasure and annihilation. Jama is interested in the possibility of disseminating the film in other formats, as well as the possibility of capturing the story in stills, paying homage to the idea of photography and self-portraiture and the ways communities have archived themselves and their stories.

The work will be presented on twenty billboard and poster spaces located in prominent sites across the city including Temple Gate, West Street, Old Market Roundabout and Kingsland Road.

On 9th September at 1pm, Asmaa Jama will present an outdoor public reading of the poetic text from ‘Except this time nothing returns from the ashes’ at West Street. They will be joined by a guest collaborator okcandice, a writer, artist-curator and musician based between Birmingham and Berlin. The performance will be followed by a group walk with the artist around the multiple sites in the local area.

Artist Asmaa Jama said:
“All About Love is a life-giving text, it’s a touchstone I and my community often go back to. We cannot be in a loveless world. How can we cultivate more care / more attention / more tenderness? In my practice, it relates back to memory, to my communities and to archival interventions. This work, is in fact, for the communities that are always discarded. The people and places, considered ruins and past saving. I’m interested in what happens to them after, the ways they gather and recreate worlds. I’m interested in archival excavation, in the film the archivist is implicitly connected to the story, and contaminates the record with their love. They help the spectres that haunt the photographs return. I think love is a contaminating force that helps us resist our erasures and our annihilation. In Bristol, the places I love are the places that people have resisted their erasures, like St. Paul’s, Easton and Barton Hill. Where the communities gather, and salvage themselves.’

Curator Zarina Rossheart said:
‘Except this time nothing returns from the ashes by Asmaa Jama is a work of extraordinary beauty, courage and self-love. It is very important to Asmaa to share it with people who otherwise don’t access galleries and cinemas, who are kept out by the systems in place. The process of disassembling the film and the script into photographic stills with fragments of text gives us a glimpse into the tenderness and poetic texture of the work; while presenting it on large-scale billboards in public settings across Bristol supports the artist’s intention to resist erasure and create visibility for those who too often remain unseen.’

ALL ABOUT LOVE | APRIL – SEPTEMBER 2023

‘All About Love’ is part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s ongoing Your Space Or Mine initiative, which gives artists and creatives across the UK a unique platform to present their work outdoors and connect with communities across our cities. The idea behind Your Space Or Mine is not only to support the creative community, but to also use street space as an intervention to inspire and energise local neighbourhoods.

The point of departure for this newly-launching commission was a quote from All About Love, the groundbreaking book, published in 2000, by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author bell hooks:

‘Whether it is the ongoing worldwide presence of violence expressed by the persistence of the man-made war, hunger and starvation, the day-to-day reality of violence, the presenceQ of life-threatening diseases that cause the unexpected deaths of friends, comrades, and loved ones, there is much that brings everyone to the brink of despair. Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into the sea of despair.’

Sacred, redemptive and healing – the ‘All About Love’ project uses hooks’ writing as a starting point, inspiring audiences to create a better future together.