Artist: Heather Agyepong

Doyle Wham presents Through Motion, a solo presentation of Heather Agyepong.

Heather Agyepong’s new solo exhibition Through Motion offers a mini-retrospective tracing the past three years of her multi-disciplinary creative practice. The earliest work on display is the video performance piece The Body Remembers (2022), which has its screening debut at Doyle Wham. Reflecting on the significance of this work and the decision to exhibit it now, Agyepong says:

“When I created The Body Remembers, it was the first time I was guided by my own body rather than by archival material. Embracing physical, emotional and mental vulnerability had a transformative impact on my practice and laid the foundation for my photographic series Ego Death. Exhibiting these two bodies of work alongside each other for the first time is an opportunity to reflect and revisit, particularly on the therapeutic role that movement plays in my work. While the word ‘retrospective’ is often reserved for the end of an artist’s career, I believe that the act of looking back, as well as within, is both vital and necessary in order to move forward.”

The idea of the body as an archive is central to Agyepong’s practice and this exhibition. In The Body Remembers, the artist adopts the principles of self-directed movement therapy: moving instinctively without choreography, and in the presence of an audience, allowing the body to speak. Agyepong’s performance is soundtracked by interviews with Black British women in trauma recovery, connecting and contextualising her own process of repair.

In Ego Death, a photographic series originally commissioned by Jerwood Arts & Photoworks, Agyepong delves deeper into her inner self to explore what Carl Jung termed ‘the Shadow.’ According to Jung, ‘the Shadow’ consists of the parts of one’s personality considered unacceptable (by family, social norms etc.) and subsequently shamed and suppressed. To access and reveal these parts of herself, Agyepong embraced long periods of free-writing and free-painting, before enacting and embodying each emergent personality aspect through movement. This process culminated in seven self-portraits, each representing a different aspect of her Shadow. Agyepong drew inspiration from cultural influences in cinema, including Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight—which inspired the series’ striking blue colour palette—and characters from Jordan Peele’s Get Out. This marks the first time that the artist, whose creative practice extends to a highly celebrated acting career (most recently making her West End debut as the co-lead in Shifters and featuring in Netflix’s Joy) has integrated elements of pop culture into her visual work. This is both a tribute to the striking impact these films have had on Agyepong’s psyche, and a testament to the increasingly holistic nature of her artistic practice.

Heather Agyepong is a British Ghanaian visual artist and actor who lives and works in London. Her art practice is concerned with mental health and wellbeing, invisibility, the diaspora and the archive. Agyepong uses both lens-based practices and performance with the aim of culminating a cathartic experience for both herself and the viewer. By adopting the technique of re-imagination, the artist engages with communities of interest and the self as a central focus within the image.

Agyepong’s works are in collections such as Autograph ABP, Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), The Hyman Collection, Arts Council England, New Orleans Museum of Art, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Mead Art Museum and The Walther Collection. Agyepong has been commissioned by Photoworks, Artichoke, the Mayor of London & Tate Exchange, and she is a Nikon European Ambassador.

Nominations and awards include the South Bank Sky Arts Breakthrough Award 2018, Firecracker Photographic Grant 2020, Foam Talent 2021, Jerwood/Photoworks Award 2022, Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer Award 2021, The Photographers Gallery New Talent Award 2021 and Taylor Wessing Photo Prize Exhibiting Artist 2023.

In Agyepong’s television/film and theatre work, she is drawn to challenging and compelling writing and has an interest in unique voices. In 2024, Agyepong made her West End debut as co-lead in Shifters at the Duke of York’s Theatre for which she was nominated for Best Performance in the UK Theatre Awards.