On Our Doorsteps: Relax Here by Zakiya Mackenzie
Transcript
The artwork that you can see here presents a text by writer Zakiya Mackenzie. It is one of 6 large artworks presented on 3meter x 1 and a half meter billboards around the Sweet Briar Marshes Nature Reserve in Norwich as part of a nationwide project called On Our Doorsteps.
Filling the billboard with large, dark-green letters, Zakiya’s writing reads:
Relax here with the steady wavelengths of wind
Send the noise of your mind away with the breeze
Listen for the sound of the earth
This is how it feels to belong
Behind Zakiya’s text we see a black & white photographic background. The image seems to be a close-up view of a meadow, full of round flower heads which sit on the end of long, angular stems. The stems criss-cross before our eyes and the photograph is dotted all over with the round dark heads of the flowers. The flowers and grasses look dry, prickly. We might imagine the rustling sound that the wind might make when passing through the scene before us. Further away, the details fade into bright light and all we can see are the dark dots of the flowerheads. At the edge of the meadow we can just make out the dark shapes of bushes and hedgerows.
The image is a black and white photograph, but in the bottom right corner of the image we see a narrow, horizontal rectangle made up of different colours. To the right we see dark shades of green in wide bands. Moving to the left we see bands of medium, then lighter green and at the left-hand end of the rectangle, we see a large patch of bright yellow alongside a pale-yellow band. Beside these, we see narrow strips showing different shades of pink and purple. Maybe these are the colours we would have seen in we were there when the photograph was taken. Perhaps we can imagine them back into the black and white image.
This was one of Zakiya Makenzie’s texts for On Our Doorsteps. She created two other artworks which can also be seen around Sweet Briar Marshes. In March Zakiya Mackenzie spent three afternoons walk with a group of people from local communities in Norwich and across Norfolk. They included members of the Norfolk Queer Birders Group, members of the Friends of Train Wood, volunteers who have worked with the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and others who know and love Sweet Briar Marshes. They walked, talked and wrote together, sharing their reflections on the landscape and what it means to feel connected to such a place. You can find more of the writing that came out of these sessions through the project page on the Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s website.
The project was developed and produced by We Live Here, in collaboration with the Norfolk & Norwich Festival and the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. It is funded by Arts Council England and the Finnish Institute.