RE, JUV & NATION

Lately I have been meditating on the concept of energy transference, and the spaces that give, take, or create. I think there is something that can be called a kind of attention capitalism. Your attention is currency. Originally sapped from us through draining one-sided media, extended through to social media and other such painkiller-type platforms.

I believe that this has extended through to events. Specifically certain events I have been attending in London. Some of these events are truly amazing spaces where energy is created together: they feel safe, they feel intimate, they feel real. However, a great many of these events feel incredibly draining, and I leave feeling as if something has been taken from me, rather than created or given. This is a new manifestation of attention capitalism: capitalising on trending identity and cultural aesthetics with the promise of being the former. 

Some choose to participate in attention capitalism because it can be seen as quite a glamorous and fun career. However, moving forward, I have found it important to distinguish whether the events I am attending are feeding into trends, and exhausting me in the process, or symbiotically helping to affect the changes I would like to support.

Liyaan Khoso 

Liyaan Khoso grew up across Africa, The Middle East, South Asia, and Southern Europe. She went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the UK, experiencing the combined momentous societal changes in the country brought on by the COVID19 pandemic and Brexit. This diverse exposure and set of experiences led to the compounding of Khoso’s political positions of radical acceptance, communal restoration, and an understanding of mental health issues as structural rather than personal. Khoso has been featured in group exhibitions across London and has been published in a few zines around the UK. She currently works in social research, aiming to one day enact structural changes at the policy-level.

Khoso’s art style focuses on surreal figurative painting. Through the artist's bizarre colourful representations of reality, with spontaneous brush strokes and pattern, one falls into the imaginary. The abstract concepts in Khoso’s work involve the freedom of identity and the foundational constructions of self. Identity conceived of as the boundaries to an indeterminate energy, where they are a continuous process of movement and self creation.

Related to this, is the depiction of mental health and how this can affect the boundaries one sets as identity. The premises that we learn as children affect us across our lives is a core theme to Khoso's work. Their art recognises a constant critical questioning and amending of these core premises in order to shape more positive perceptions and realities for individuals. Khoso believes that when one becomes an active agent in their belief system, it can eventually change a whole community for the better: change begins at a micro-level, not the macro.  

Based on our agreement with the artist, 15% of the pre-VAT price excluding frames will be donated to support the social movement. Donations will be given to Strong Minds.