Whose Land Is This? Is a project created in a week long residency at AME in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, as part of their Zero Parameters Residency in October 2023. Resulting in a 30 minute audio visual performance, the piece combined poetry, music and animation.
Inspired by the writing of Claire Ratinon’s text ‘Unearthed’, ‘Green Unpleasant Land’ by Corrine Fowler and Ingrid Pollard’s seminal work Cost Of The English Landscape , Whose Land Is This? dives into Ashman’s feelings of discomfort and disconnection whilst visiting rural landscapes of the UK as a Black women. Whose Land Is This? questions the unspoken histories of Black peoples connection to the “Great” British countryside, as well as interrogating the ownership of rural UK land and how this space can be reclaimed.
This project is a work in progress, with images below being part of the aforementioned AME residency.