Snapshot 09: Scouse Bird? by Sandra Mutukwa

PRESS RELEASE

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Snapshot presents Snapshot 09: Scouse Bird? by Sandra Mutukwa.

Sandra Mutukwa is a Level 6 BA Fine Art student. Born in Wrocław, Poland, to a Polish mother and Zambian father, she grew up and currently resides in Liverpool. Her multidisciplinary practice explores the internal conflict of being a mixed-race immigrant, and approaches abstract themes by envisioning dystopian worlds that combat the traditional sense of identity lost during relocation. Her work predominantly utilises oil painting and printmaking with textual components to disclose sentiments of a lack of identity. Inquiring into her refusal of citizenship and the trauma of migrating during early childhood years, Sandra simultaneously acknowledges that her multiracial ethnic background is a product of migration. She aims to bring awareness to her experience without demonising immigration, holding the oppressors in positions of power accountable for insisting harmful rhetoric within the media.

The project on display, Scouse Bird? (2024-2025) is a body of work created in response to the anti-immigration riots of August 2024 in Liverpool and other regions. During this time, Sandra witnessed a bird fall to its death in her garden, causing great distress in sounding like a brick has been thrown at the window. This has developed a train of thought in imagining a world where people migrate as birds do, and the implications that would result in; likely in chaos like riots. Comparing these two narratives through the overlapping theme of trauma, as well as dual meanings in the artwork titles and the series overarching title (alluding to the personification of the bird as a self-portrait), Sandra is attempting to communicate the questioning of identity and the search for a solution.

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