Le Cake-Walk: Caucasian Chalk Circle (#9.2 Triptych), 2020, Heather Agyepong. (Commissioned by The Hyman Collection)
We’re building a virtual Cabinet of Remedies and we’re offering you the opportunity to share your writing with our community. Through your work, you can help shape this important archive for the future.
Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve found much solace in Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s book, Art as Therapy. They talk about how art can connect us to our inner worlds and unique needs, identifying a number of psychological frailties to which art can be an antidote. Within this framework, we are asking artists to respond to the current situation. We are using this artwork as the foundation of a dialogue between visual art and the written word.
How to Participate
Create a piece of flash fiction using Heather’s image as the prompt.
- Maximum 100 words, excluding the title
- One challenge: You must use the phrase “wish you were here”.
- You are welcome to share up to five pieces
- Submit as an attachment to an email to hello@hundredheroines.org
- (Optional) include your social media handles and/or link to your website
- Deadline – 18:00 (BST) Thursday 1st October 2020
- A selection will be published on our website over the next few weeks
Heather’s Inspiration
Wish you were here focuses on the work of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer who challenged the rigid and problematic narratives of black performers. She was known as the Queen of the Cake Walk which was a dance craze that swept America & Europe in the early 1900s. During the turn of the century postcards depicting Cake Walk dancers were distributed around Europe, which were often grotesque and offensive with the allure of spectacle where the performers lacked agency. Wish you were here uses the figure of Overton Walker to re-imagine these postcards as one not of oppression but of self-care with a mandate for people of Afro-Caribbean descent to take up space. The images explore the concepts of ownership, entitlement and mental wellbeing. Each image is layered with symbolism to illicit a conversation about the boundaries of how we see ourselves both in real and imagined realities.
Small Print
- By entering your work, you agree that it can be published on our website and used to promote the Cabinet of Remedies initiative.
- You will be credited as the author of the work on our website.
- You retain the copyright over your work at all times.
