Unseen: Archiving the Hidden Black Disabled Experience

Christopher Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics, often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience. Seeking to interrogate his personal understanding of identity as a disabled person impacted by inequality and marginalisation, Christopher responds with urgency, humour and poetic subversiveness within his work. This approach makes his work accessible to a wider audience, allowing others to identify and relate to a wider spectrum of human experience.

Melanie Keen is Director of Wellcome Collection, London, which aims to challenge the way we think and feel about health. Her intention is to give voice to radical imagination on what health is and what it could be. She is committed to reshaping our cultural assumptions around race, disability and gender, and the human relationship to planetary health. A graduate of the RCA, Melanie has worked as a curator, and in arts policy and funding at Arts Council England. Prior to joining Wellcome Collection, she was Director and Chief Curator at pioneering arts organisation Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), where she was instrumental in the revitalisation of Iniva’s mission and vision by making the Stuart Hall Library its creative hub.

Arike Oke’s practice is rooted in social justice and the role of culture in giving strength to, and inspiring, individuals and communities. She has worked in heritage for over 15 years, from the seminal Connecting Histories project in Birmingham, to developing Wellcome Collection’s archive and co-convening Hull’s first official Black History Month. She currently leads the screen heritage collections at the British Film Institute in the role of Executive Director of Knowledge and Collections. She was formerly the Managing Director for Black Cultural Archives, the home of Black British history.