Supported by the Art Fund, Autograph has commissioned interdisciplinary artists Jeannette Ehlers, Sasha Huber and Mónica de Miranda to create new work responding to an open-ended brief emphasising the experience of Afrodiasporic communities in Europe, identity formations and migration, freedom of movement, and ideas of care during the Covid-19 pandemic and post-Brexit.

The project’s subtitle ‘Stranger in the Village’ references African-American novelist James Baldwin’s seminal essay about his experience of alienation in Switzerland during the early 1950s.

Each artist commission has been contextualised with a newly published in-conversation, and by inviting a writer to produce a short essay about the work created.

Jeannette Ehlers: We’re Magic. We’re Real #3 (From Sunset to Sunrise)

Jeannette Ehlers’ poetic series of photographs examines hair as an important marker of Pan-African identity and connectedness. View commission here

Sasha Huber: The Firsts – Tilo Frey

Honouring Cameroonian-Swiss politician Tilo Frey (1923-2008), who campaigned for women’s rights and suffrage in Switzerland. View commission here

Mónica de Miranda: The Island

Artist Mónica de Miranda contemplates the complex experiences of Afrodiasporic lives, relationships to the land and colonial pasts. View commission here

Watch back a conversation considering how we can work together towards diversifying our national collections and support artists in the making, and placing, of new works

Read more about Amplify — Stranger in the Village: Afro European Matters

All images: Autograph