Lungs Manifesto

Lungs Project is a space created by womxn of colour!

For the past two years, we have hoped to deliver a diverse programme both online and in print. Instead, we face the futility of trying to pursue diversity while at the same time being engrossed in the regional discourse of the North East of England. Have we failed to provide ethnically diverse and rich content? Lungs 2016 featured three women of colour out of thirty; Lungs 2017 featured only one!

What went wrong?

We wanted to empower artists from similar backgrounds to ourselves. How did we end up producing publications which consisted of mainly white artists? We fully support the class discussion in the arts, especially in working-class communities which we call home. Beyond this, we are not here to preserve a predominantly white argument. We are here to diversify it! Hence, we are geographically widening our reach so that we can focus on people of colour who have something to add to our discussion.

Our goal is to interrogate our social reality, and its multi-layered intersections such as gender, sex, origins, class, political orientation, and religion. We want to look at how contemporary artists of colour thematise the issues surrounding social identity.

We want to dehegemonise the art system and scrutinise its dominant narratives! Therefore Lungs 2018 will be a space of dialogue for artists and writers of colour, exclusively.

Words: Angela Burdon & Sheyda A. Khaymaz

Published: January 2018