Jamila Prowse

Through our work with Jamila, we are considering how organisations can support artists through different pay structures and timeframes. Over a period of 4 years of slow thinking Grand Union have been/are in conversation with Jamila, developing ideas for a project that will be presented in 2027. Working in crip time* and towards models of funding that can be flexible and meaningful remain core elements of the relationship, two things that are increasingly difficult to navigate in the current landscape. Grand Union are continually seeking to understand how we can affect change within the current systems so that a more equitable working process is possible for everyone we work with. 

*Crip time: A concept arising from disabled experience that addresses the ways that disabled/chronically ill and neurodivergent people experience time (and space) differently than able-bodyminded folk. (https://cdsc.umn.edu/cds/terms)

About the Artist

Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, propelled by curiosity and a desire to understand herself through making. Informed by her lived experience of disability, mixed race ancestry and the loss of her father at a young age; her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world since 2018. Self taught, Jamila is drawn to experimenting with a multitude of mediums in order to process her grief and radical hope.

Viewing her practice as grief work, Jamila uses visual art making as a way to process complex family histories, loss, trauma and the isolation of being a bedbound, disabled, autistic person. Often incorporating oral histories into the conception of her works; the location of voice is vital in her explorations. She embeds creative access adjustments from the outset of each project – seeing access as a method of artistic articulation.