–
Open Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays 12.00 - 5.00pm. Free to enter, no ticket required.
Desire Lines is the Women's Museum's latest exhibition and programme. It takes inspiration from the desire lines that appear in public landscapes, when people take an unplanned route rather than the designated alternative. These lines reveal traces of agency and represent an active reshaping of the environment. As a new cultural space, the Women’s Museum is using this concept of desire lines to prompt reflection on its role, path and its place in the Barking community.
For each season, the exhibition will feature an artistic commission. We recently unveiled our new Summer commission, Tracing Together, by digital art collective Compiler. As part of our Desire Lines exhibition, you can also still see our Spring commission, Tender Women, made by artist Sahra Hersi in collaboration with a group of women from Adanna Women’s Support Group.
Alongside the commissioned artworks, you can join us for a free community programme inspired by the themes of EAT, SPEAK, BREATHE, and PLAY. These themes will be explored with open forums, public discussions, a cinema programme, and family workshops. Find out more about our upcoming programme on our events page and stay up-to-date by joining our newsletter.
Tracing Together
The Summer artistic commission by digital art collective Compiler was developed through a series of drop-in workshops with the local community.
Picking up threads from the Spring commission Tender Women by Sahra Hersi, the theme of Desire Lines is explored through an interest in the history of cross-stitch embroidery, such as Palestinian Tatreez and similar practices from other cultures. Tracing Together explores these as a precursor to digital image-making. Reconsidering the power of repeatable designs as a way of preserving cultural identity and connection to place.
Inspired by low-resolution, small-file digital images, Compiler invited people local to The Women’s Museum to create patterns and motifs that speak to personal journeys, overlooked routes, places and things that matter to them in the local area. Workshop participants encoded places, stories, or feelings into a collective digital tapestry, now presented in Tracing Together, an installation of LED screens that visualise points of connection and traces left for others.
At a time when the mass sharing of high-resolution visuals online, driven by big-tech platforms, is becoming increasingly harmful to the planet due to power consumption, Tracing Together revisits slower, low-impact image-making practices that continue to endure.
About Compiler
Compiler is a digital art collective led by Tanya Boyarkina and Oscar Cass-Darweish. The group's creative practice explores social and political challenges in digital culture. They aim to create accessible works and events for audiences with different skills, knowledge and abilities to better understand emerging digital technologies.
Tender Women
The Spring artistic commission of the Desire Lines programme was developed by artist Sahra Hersi through a series of five workshops with women from Adanna Women's Support Group.
Designed and led by Sahra Hersi, the workshops explored various creative techniques including indigo dyeing, cyanotype, cross-stitching, collaging, and poetry writing to explore how women can carve out their own paths.
The concept of 'Desire Lines’, informal trails created by repeated use, symbolises the pursuit of more direct and meaningful routes in life. This theme guided the workshops, encouraging participants to reflect on their roles in society and how to realise their hopes and dreams.
Selected artworks from the workshops, alongside a new responsive piece by Sahra Hersi, are showcased in the exhibition. Titled Tender Women, the name was collectively chosen by the women through a collaborative poetry exercise, encapsulating the spirit of their shared journey.
About Sahra Hersi
Sahra Hersi is an artist and spatial designer who lives in Barking, and she describes her work as “caring about people, places, art & architecture, in that order.” Her work is public and ranges in scale from zines and workshops to public realm interventions and buildings. She seeks to establish a working philosophy driven by the desire to reinterpret architectural methodology and artistic narrative as common ground. Her practice explores shared spaces, the public realm, collaboration, and community engagement. Her work often emerges through engagement with local communities and the places they occupy. Sahra works with local authority clients, cultural institutions, galleries and third sector organisations across the UK and beyond.
About Adanna Women's Support Group
Adanna Women’s Support Group is a non-profit organisation that aims to empower and uplift women going through challenges in their lives. They support by providing information, advice and helping build their self-confidence, believing that women can overcome any issues they may be facing such as relationship issues, domestic violence, debt, unemployment, loneliness and isolation, challenges bringing up their children, etc. They also host events and run various projects/services.
