Fusion Talk: In Conversation with Artist Amina Atiq

Amina Atiq is a Yemeni poet, performance artist, creative- cultural practitioner and award-winning community activist. She is an anti- racism advisory member with Curious Minds, Artist Fellow at DaDaFest and Social Cohesion Fellow Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Residency 2022.

Amina Atiq is one of the artists that delivered artwork for These Things Matter Exhibition.

These Things Matter is a small partnership exhibition between Museum of Colour, Bodleian Libraries and Fusion Arts, featuring six objects relating to slavery and empire, and six contemporary responses created by artists.

Amina's artwork for These Things Matter is a poet called WENCH.

Wench is a poetic response which explores the relationship between free people working at the plantation and the enslaved. The poem reacts to the final passage of the letter, where the apprentice James Millet asks to purchase the mother, whom he refers to as a wench (a medieval word that evolved to become a racist smear), and her 10-month old child. In Amina Atiq’s work we hear the mother’s voice, her words taking back power from these misogynistic and racist attitudes towards women.

Amina Atiq reads her poem Wench – This poem is featured in TTM exhibition, on display at the Weston Library.

We caught up with Amina to find out more about her artistic practice, commissioned artwork on display, and lastly what is one word you would use to describe the TTM exhibition.

Click to watch Amina's interview.

I am Amina Atiq and I am a poet performance artist and creative activist, based in Liverpool.

I am in Oxford today for These Things Matter amazing launch, that I have been honored to be part of. I have been moved, I have been challenged, and I have been inspired some parts of different. But we are here celebrating, and creating legacy.

My artistic response to These Things Matter is a poetry response with the title called 'Wench', Wench is a name that James Millet use in his letter to describe the mother that he wanted to purchase from Sir William. And I wanted to use the title and this poem to give power back to the mother that we do not get a chance to hear from