NADA House 2021

The exhibition comprises the latest chapter of Clement Siatous’ ongoing epic pictorial narrative of the collective history of the Chagos Islands, Indian Ocean.

Exiled from his homeland by the British Government to make way for a US naval base in 1973, Siatous renders a counterpoint to official and traditional modes of record. Working with acrylic on canvas, he creates canvases that draw from memory, photography and film. Through his practice he reclaims ownership of his own history, while becoming a voice for his community in defying their culture’s eradication.

‘Siatous’s decision to paint is striking. It is partially about creating a counter-memory, using one of the oldest technologies in the world - painting, to reassert the presence and identity of a culture distrustful of newer imaging technologies with their guise of objectivity. It is also about an activist sense of time; the sum of the marks that went into their own slow creation. Patience a radical gesture’. - Jayce Clayton