Bella Millroy and Khairani Barokka

‘Languages of Intimacy’ is the first large-scale exhibition of visual work in the UK by British artist Bella Milroy and Indonesian artist Khairani Barokka taking place at Grand Union Gallery in Autumn 2025.

Through the exhibition, the artists will explore interiority and play from two distinct sick-disabled perspectives. Drawing on and expanding themes within the exhibition, a hybrid public programme will accompany in person and online.

A digital photographic scanned image (landscape, colour) of what looks like the front of a brown envelope. It is torn open, with an address printed along the tear. It reads “If undelivered please return to DWP, PO Box, Belfast. BT1 1DW”. It is presented in portrait, with the torn opening running down the left. Taking up the majority of the envelope is a hand-drawn image, perhaps in charcoal, of what looks like some kind of small furry creature, maybe a cat, eating from a small bowl. The image is loose and expressive. Underneath in similarly loose handwriting are the words “Violence in the form of stationery”. — “Envelope, April 2018”, Bella Milroy, charcoal on envelope, featured as part of 30/30 (online), 2018

A portrait image featuring two projected images in a dark space. One image, which is blue toned picture of a hand using a rubber against an abstract image of a figure, is projected on the wall. The second image, which is projected on the floor, is a warm toned painting of a nude figure. — ‘Annah, Nomenclature’, Khairani Barokka
performance at the ICA, 2018. Image by Christa Holka.

The working relationship between Bella Milroy, Khairani Barokka, and Grand Union’s co-programme Director Hannah Wallis began in 2022, when Hannah invited Bella and Khairani to participate in an in-conversation as part of Wysing Art Centre’s ‘From The Ground Up: The Gathering’ weekend.

This event explored the concept of ‘crip time’ in relation to rural contexts and anti-colonial praxis. ‘Crip time’ refers to a re-imagination of time, acknowledging the different ways in which disabled and neurodivergent people experience time and space.

You can watch this in-conversation online here →

Bella and Khairani built on this conversation in 2024, when Bella invited Khairani to write a piece for her collaboration with LEVEL Centre, ‘Further Afield’.

‘Further Afield’ was a project exploring the work of disabled artists who are rurally based or whose creative practices are rooted in rural settings. The programme celebrated the work of disabled artists and questioned what we expect to find in rural art, striving to broaden the current understanding of what the rural embodies, who experiences it, and what kinds of art is made there.

A landscape image of the English countryside, featuring a pale grey sky over a green hill cloaked in fields and foliage. The green of the plantlife seems subdued by the light. Dark, mustard yellow text is superimposed across the top of the image, reading 'Further Afield'. — Image courtesy of LEVEL Centre, 2022.

You can find out more about 'Further Afield' by clicking here →

Bella Milroy

Bella Milroy is an artist and writer based in Sheffield. She works responsively through mediums of sculpture, drawing, photography, text, writing, gardening and curating. She makes work about making work (and being disabled) and not being able to make work (and being disabled). This process-based practice is fundamental to her as a disabled artist. She is continually motivated by concepts of public and private spaces and where the sick and/or disabled body exists within them, themes which emerge throughout much of her work. ‘Languages of Intimacy’ presents an expansion of Bella’s drawing practice.

A digital photograph (portrait, colour) of a figure standing in what looks like some kind of bathroom setting. We can tell this by the blocks of white square tiles in the background to the right of the image, and how the person in the image is wearing what looks like a cream coloured towelling robe. The photograph is also somewhat distorted with a surface of what looks like water droplets or steam on a glassy surface. It could be that the photograph taken is of the reflection of a bathroom mirror, but it isn't clear. The image is dark at the top and brighter at the middle and bottom, around the person's face, with the left side brighter than the right in shadow. The person has pale white skin, andis wearing something dense and compact on their head but it isn't clear what. They are looking up at the ceiling with their mouth slightly open. Their features merge with the water droplets, making both their face and the surface highly textural in how they catch the light. The scene is strange and beautiful. — “Title: Surprise view (always)”, Bella Milroy, Digital photograph (self portrait) printed onto brushed dibond, commissioned as part of solo show “Sick Gaze, Level Centre, 2022

She is passionate about contributing to the cataloguing of disabled artists, as well as advocating for better, more accessible and enjoyable working experiences for disabled artists across the industry. Examples of this are found in many of her curatorial projects such as Soft Sanctuary (2019-2021), Mob-Shop (2021), and Further Afield (2024). She was Artistic Associate at Level Centre, Rowsley, Derbyshire 2021-23.

You can find out more about Bella's practice via her website by clicking here →

Khairani Barokka

Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) is a writer, artist, arts consultant, translator and editor from Jakarta. Khairani’s writing and art centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis. This often involves subverting expectations of formats such as captions—which in her work often takes the form of poetry, essays, and hybrid work—and practices such as translation. By focussing on affective flows of violence in colonial capitalism past and present, Khairani consistently link environmental and indigenous justice to disability justice, and to historical colonial archives and visual cultures, in the work. In particular, Khairani centre forms of disability justice that are rooted in Global South lived experiences, including her own.

A landscape digital image featuring abstract illustrations and text. The following is written in black text against a bright blue background, above an illustration of a lipstick made of rainforest, in the abstract-and-traditional-print river-fire. I bet you, from the raucous Machinery I'm hearing And the smell of rashness, That this is where the grease deals Are siphoned into miners' food. And where they are packing down Eons of intricacies and strength From the forest to molecular form On a woman's lipstick bottle in Iowa,' — Digital illustration and poetry by Khairani Barokka, a page
from Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis Press, 2016).

‘[Molekuler] PAPER MONEY’, Khairani Barokka, digital collage on photographic print, commissioned by Wellcome Collection, 2021

Khairani regularly lectures, judges, mentors, and consults for arts organisations, and has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, on an LPDP Scholarship, and a Masters from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she was a Departmental Fellow and Scholar. Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Rope (Nine Arches), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches). Her nonfiction debut, Annah, Infinite, is forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press in 2025.

You can find out more about Khairani's practice via her website by clicking here →

Languages of Intimacy will take place alongside an expanded public programme in Autumn/Winter and is generously supported by Arts Council England Project Grant, Paul Hamlyn Art Fund, The Elephant Trust, Shape Arts and DASH.