Liverpool artist Kiara Mohamed has created a powerful and poetic film, Home, using spectacular drone footage shot above the artist’s L8 Toxteth neighbourhood in Liverpool. The film examines notions of home, vulnerability and care during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kiara Mohamed is a Queer, multidisciplinary artist, and one of the Liverpool’s most outstanding filmmakers. In this new short he reflects on the concept of home and what it means to different people, acknowledging that “not everyone has a home they deserve”, or even a home at all. The film touches on social issues including homelessness and the minimum wage workers who now find themselves on the front line of the fight against the virus.
Home culminates by encouraging us to take the lessons learned from the pandemic forward, and to continue, in these uncertain times, to reach out to those whose house is not a home beyond the immediate crisis.
Mohamed’s carefully directed drone eye view is exhilarating and mesmerising and we travel with him as the camera soars above houses and city landmarks, out to the Mersey river and then home.
You can watch the film on Vimeo here:
Home was originally premiered as part of LightNight at Home on Friday 15 May by Bluecoat, and received a rapturous response on social media. The premiere continues Bluecoat’s commitment to showing new work and supporting artists from the city and beyond.
Kiara Mohamed said:
“I created Home to archive this moment in history and all my feelings during this pandemic. In the film you can hear the clock missing a tick every now and then, a symbolic disruption to life as we know it. As someone who was a homeless teenager and has lived in houses that were not a home to me, I wanted to let those surviving through domestic violence, honour based violence and homophobic and transphobic homes, that we remember them and it is our moral duty to reach out. We all have a social responsibility to those who are vulnerable and despite the disruption in our lives due to Covid, we all need to do what we can to help one another.”
Bluecoat’s Head of Programme, Marie-Anne McQuay:
“Home is a deeply tender, poetic and timely film made under lockdown conditions by Liverpool artist Kiara Mohamed. The artist and filmmaker questions notions of home – whether home is a safe place, whether we have the home we deserve, what it is to be bounded by our home – in a mesmerising short film. The reaction to his film has been so strong, with viewers from across the city, the UK and beyond responding to her themes and message, we want to make sure that Home receives the widest audience possible.”
Mohamed’s work focuses on identity, social issues and the role art plays in our lives in addressing these issues. He uses photography, poetry, film and drone photography to comment on post-colonial ideas and reflect on her background and the community that he lives in. In 2018, he made Black Flowers, a film about Liverpool’s colonial history, which was shown at Tate Liverpool and the British Museum.
Funded by:
Supported by:
Image credit:
Still from Home, 2020, by Kiara Mohamed
Categories: News
