Rhea Dillon: From Landing to Arrival

In From Landing to Arrival, a project specifically conceived for Frieze London 2022, artist Rhea Dillon (b. 1996, London, UK) re-considers the significance of — and difference between — the concepts of arrival and landing for the Caribbean diaspora. For Dillon, those who were moved by the triangular slave trade landed in the Caribbean or landed in the Americas, but did not choose to arrive. Similarly, those who were invited by the Queen to rebuild the UK post-WW2 were misled in their expectations of a country that would accept them with open arms. They thought they were arriving, but landed instead. By contrast, the artist, part of the second generation of the Caribbean diaspora in the UK now feels able to arrive almost anywhere.

In this video, Dillon tells us about her work Sole Responsibility: Aged 12, but above, 2022, a wall-based sculpture that recreates the soles of the feet of Dillon’s grandmother and uncle in cut glass. In 1971, a new Immigration Act legitimised the notion that Black people were second-class citizens. This was followed by a series of immigration rules, which although went almost unnoticed by the media at the time, severely affected Black communities. One such regulation, known as the Sole Responsibility rule, made it particularly difficult for Black women to bring their children to the UK if they were a single parent. Always installed on walls facing each other, like mother and child, these works offer two parts of one whole that remain perpetually separated and roots the presentation in Dillon’s personal history.

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