Human Perspectives exhibition

Exploring identity, culture, and self-expression through the voice of new British artists.

Human Perspectives title image

Following the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and socio-political systemic racism that sparked across the United Kingdom, the United States and globally, the Gonville & Caius College MCR wished to contribute to lasting change.

Together, with support from the College, Caius MCR, led by BME Officer David Posner (Molecular Biology PhD 2020), MCR President Saba Shivani (7T Physics PhD 2019) and MCR Vice-President Ayat Abdurahman (Psychology 2019), devised the first Human Perspectives art exhibition to highlight the work of new minority artists. The exhibition was promoted in early September 2021.

After a broad invitation for artists across the UK to submit their fine works, seven artists were selected to participate in the exhibition: Anuschka Barlas, Ramona Verallo, Mansi Shouche, Precious Ndukuba (Cantab), Yeonjoo Cho, Yasmin Noorbakhsh and Yeonsu Ju.

The free exhibition took place from Saturday 16 October to Saturday 23 October at the Harvey Court JCR, West Road, Cambridge.

Pieces were made available for sale after the exhibition. For more details contact: Human.Perspectives.Caius@gmail.com

Precious Ndukuba

Precious NdukubaPrecious Ndukuba is a current third-year undergraduate student studying Architecture at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Born in London, raised in Rugby and a second-generation Nigerian migrant, she is currently researching issues of the home within the British-Nigerian diaspora. She has been painting and sketching consistently since a young age but only recently, after the passing of her grandmother, have her artistic and research pursuits collided. Using mostly oil on stretched canvas, her abstract works take inspiration from personal objects, found scraps of nature and family heirlooms. 

Yasmin Noorbakhsh

Yasmin NoorbakhshYasmin Noorbakhsh (b. 1978 Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. She has studied both in Iran and the UK and is currently doing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School. Her practice relates strongly with transcultural identity, displacement, and living with the uncertain feelings of life "in-between". Yasmin's source of inspiration pays attention to history, human beliefs and culture and also effects of post-revolutionary Iran including the Iran-Iraq war. With uncertainty being the core of her practice, in her multifaceted layers and complex surfaces Yasmin tries to depict the state of being in-between two spaces. Between known and unknown, pleasant and unpleasant and how sometimes the two are interwoven to each other. She borrows elements from Persian traditional art and history and fuses them with elements of Modern art creating a strong sense of friction and collision. “My marks cannot exist only with rational thinking, there are controlled moments but also intuitive and loose too. All elements that I work with participate and engage in an experiment, an experiment of finding hope in chaos”, she says.

See Yasmin's website, or Instagram page

Mansi Shouche

Mansi ShoucheA few themes seem to run consistently through the work Mansi creates. These are based on a deep connection with nature. She also usually gravitates towards using a lot of colours in her work which she credits to her Indian culture and heritage. And Abstraction which she uses recurrently as a means of expression. Currently her work might be influenced by the spiritual and Vedantic conversations she has with her husband on a regular basis. Ever evolving and experimenting in her work, she is currently on a quest to quieten her mind and deeply connect with her true inner self through her work. She has spent the last year experimenting and learning how to make her own art materials, using nature as a resource. She is currently about to start her third year in her Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Yeonjoo Cho

Yeonjoo ChoYeonjoo Cho is a Korean born artist who currently works in Glasgow, UK. She has shown imaginary landscapes inspired by traditional Korean painting, myth, and women’s stories. Her latest practice explores the dichotomy of East and West in painting practice and the concept of Oriental Painting (동양화; 東洋畫) commonly used in South Korea. Research has played a crucial role in her latest works, which unravel the concept of Oriental painting and hybridity in relation to colonial history in East Asia. 

Anuschka Barlas

Anuschka BarlasAnuschka Barlas is in the final year of a BA in Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art. Her practice is rooted in drawing from observation and memory to explore the sensation and emotion of familiar places and people, evoking their physical presence as well as the relationship between artist and place / sitter. During the pandemic, Anuschka spent a year living in the remote Scottish Highlands and her subject matter shifted from life drawing in the studio and in public spaces to rural and isolated landscapes. These opposite experiences combine to create moments of stillness, ambiguity and a tension between the familiar and the strange within her work.

See Anuschka 's website, or Instagram page

Yeonsu Ju

Yeon JuYeonsu Ju (B.1995) is a Korean artist based in London, UK. She is currently doing an MFA in Painting at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. She mainly works with acrylic and oil. Her main interest is to traverse the relationship between love and sadness. Yeonsu’s painting captures fantastic scenes associated with the relation of feelings. They are translated to painting poetically and symbolically. Surrealistic metamorphosis is happening in the painting. Her canvas explores imaginative narrative which comes from her wish. She is a winner of RGI New Graduate Award. Her work was shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 and others.

 

Ramona Verallo

Ramona VeralloRamona's work looks at diaspora of the global majority through history to the present day. Using personal, current and historical events, her interests lie in the ill-treatment of the “other” and the manifestation of its forms.

Through the mediums of printing, drawing and painting, Ramona uses these mediums to understand and interpret her own thoughts and research of the physical and psychological upheaval of this global majority.

She works with the materiality and properties of the mediums to explore ways of communicating in an intuitive and empathetic manner.