'Me Ladies' is a mixed media fine art diptych developed from photographic source material captured during research visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), focusing on women’s fashion, period dress, and mannequin displays within historical exhibitions.

​

Rather than documenting garments as museum artefacts, the photographic process isolates posture, silhouette, fabric structure, and feminine form. These elements are then reworked through digital and mixed media processes to construct new visual narratives that reposition Black female presence within historical aesthetic frameworks from which it has often been absent or marginalised.

​

The series engages directly with questions of visibility, authorship, and historical accuracy. By grounding the work in museum-held fashion collections, Me Ladies anchors its visual language in verifiable material culture, ensuring that the reimagining of femininity is informed by authentic historical reference rather than speculative reconstruction.

​

Through repurposing and reframing, the work resists static interpretations of history. The figures emerge not as passive mannequins or frozen ideals but as reanimated presences—reclaiming elegance, complexity, and agency within visual traditions that have rarely centred Black British women.

​

Classification

​

Form: Mixed Media Fine Art
Method: Painterly portrait construction using photographic and digital layers
Positioning: Black feminist visual practice, HCCA, cultural reframing

​

Method & Positioning

​

This body of work is

• Concept-led

• Aesthetically authored

• Theoretically situated

• Intentionally edited

• Positioned within cultural and historical discourse

​​

Sustainability, Ethics & Reuse (Eco/Green Research Practice)

​

An integral component of Me Ladies is its commitment to sustainable and ethical creative practice. The series repurposes existing photographic material that would otherwise remain unused—images that, if stored indefinitely or discarded, would continue to consume digital storage resources or be lost entirely.

​

By reactivating these photographs within research-led fine art practice, the work adopts a circular creative methodology, reducing the need for new resource-intensive production while extending the lifespan and value of existing digital material.

​

This approach aligns with environmentally conscious research practices by:

• Minimising additional energy use associated with long-term digital storage

• Reducing waste through creative reuse

• Treating archival material as an active research resource rather than static data

​​

Within this framework, sustainability is not an add-on but a methodological choice—where reuse, care, and intentionality form part of the ethical foundation of the work.

​

Together, these principles position 'Me Ladies' within practice-based research, visual anthropology, feminist historiography, and sustainable creative methodologies, where mixed-media fine art serves as a means of historical reframing, cultural continuity, and responsible knowledge production.

​

Across all three sections, mixed media functions as a methodological bridge—allowing historical visual languages to be reclaimed, re-scripted, and inhabited without deference or nostalgia.