Slidefest | GPP x BJP

April 17, 2025 | 7pm for a 7.30pm start | Oxford House, Bethnal Green

How do two or more cultures interact? How does someone born between cultures identify themselves? How does the diaspora view their homeland? And how do they integrate into a society they have adopted as their own? 

Slidefest February 2025 welcomes emerging photographers from across global diasporas, exploring projects that highlight the delicate relationship between culture, migration and identity. Five photographers will present a project for 7 minutes each, dissecting how they approached the series, their inspirations, and how they achieved the final outcome. There will be a Q+A at the end of the presentations for the audience to ask questions.

Books and prints by artists will be available for sale on the day.

Adama Jalloh

Love Story focuses on Adama’s relationship with aspects of London and her admiration for the beautiful subtleties she comes across in Black communities. Mothers and their children in their best attires on a Sunday, school children owning the streets after 3.30 on weekdays, teenagers running errands for their mums or someone simply having a moment to themselves. All of these moments are things she wants to glorify because of how closely linked and familiar they are.

Love Story has also been a way to identify and connect with what can mean ‘Home’ to herself and others, whether that’s through people, objects or spaces. The project is an ongoing series that started in 2015, with the aim of documenting and preserving moments of those around her for others to look back on.

About Adama

Adama Jalloh is a Documentary and Portrait photographer based in London. Her work revolves around race, identity and culture, cultivates a steady archive and ongoing conversation around the landscape of London and the transitions taking place within it, and aims to capture moments of intimacy, honesty and familiarity that resonate with both her own memories and experiences.

Adama began freelancing in 2017 and since then has worked with clients such as The New York Times, British Vogue, NIKE, Esquire and many others. Her work has also been exhibited internationally, at Tate Modern (London), The Photographers’ Gallery (London), Nubuke Foundation (Ghana), The African American Museum in Philadelphia (USA), Aperture Foundation (USA) and Bamako Encounters African Biennale of Photography (Mali). Adama’s work was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery as of January 2024 and was included in their group show exhibition ‘New Visions and Voices: Contemporary Portraits by Women’.

Kenneth Lam

Hong Kong & London-based photographer Kenneth Lam has created a series of seven exclusive photographs based on the newest historical and contemporary Rooms Through Time.

Known for his evocative and arresting still-life photography, this new series offers a contemporary interpretation of the period rooms by Lam - whose pieces typically explore heritage, identity, family and culture - through his own lens of home.

Each vignette of Lam’s is as distinct as the rooms themselves, weaving personal history, social commentary, and aesthetic detail into a unique visual narrative.

In collaboration with the curators and creative team at Museum of the Home, the artist gives viewers a taste of the personal narratives bringing these spaces to life. Each piece draws attention to the Museum’s collection of objects found throughout the period rooms in the gallery, recontextualised with care to reveal how domestic objects can shape and reflect the lives of their owners.

About Kenneth

Kenneth Lam is an artist based in London and Hong Kong. His mediums include photography and film. Kenneth explores ideas of identity, heritage, and sexuality through his work, his photographs often telling stories and topics inspired by autobiographical experiences.

Studying at London College of Fashion with a BA in Fashion Photography, his work naturally moved from fashion to still life and portraiture. His work has been exhibited in London and Hong Kong. His first exhibition, “A Seat at our Table,” was a visual telling of the immigrant story conveyed through food as the common language between ethnicities and cultures within London. In 2024, his personal work exhibited still lives and portraits all stemming from his ancestral village in Hong Kong, serving as a discussion on the differences between his Western upbringing in London and his heritage in Hong Kong. Through photography, he explores the dynamics within his own identity as well as serving as a conversation on the beauty of the everyday and the hardships, grief, sexuality, family, and love.

His work has been featured by the Financial Times, The Photographers' Gallery, and Nowness Asia. Commercially, he has worked and art directed for clients such as Wieden + Kennedy, The BBC, and works with numerous brands internationally.

Alex Kurunis

On the 25th and 26th of December of every year, the UNESCO protected ancient custom of Kotsamania comes alive in Tetralofos, Kozani, Western Macedonia, against the backdrop of Greece’s largest power factory. A brutal yet beautiful landscape, inhabited by a resilient and proud community.

Despite Kotsamania falling at Christmas time, it has little to do with Christianity. It derives from ancient Greek theology, namely the God Momos - the god of satire and laughter. The name ‘Momoeria’ describes this kind of ritual in general, with other places across Greece displaying customs with similar themes. Consisting of 12 dancers, symbolising each month of the year, the troupe proceed through the town, dancing in the yard of each and every home. Blessing it for the year to come, and banishing it of the bad remnants of the one that has passed.

The history of the custom stems from Pontic Greeks who were displaced from Livera during a diaspora in the 1910s/20s. A large Pontic community settled within the Kozani area, bringing with them these traditions; Kotsamania acts as an integral way for them to connect with their identity and honour their ancestors’ memory.

The troupe, or Kotsiamans, dress in beautifully crafted folkloric attire, such as their hand embroidered bold red capes and their characteristic hats. The hats are adorned with beads and mirrors, which glisten in the varying intensities of sun throughout the procession. The hats are generally inherited by family, carefully repaired through time, linking ancestry through garments.

This project is part of a broader and long term series I’m working on, documenting the multiplicity of unique folkloric customs across Greece, by means of embracing and navigating my heritage. I believe there is great merit in looking to instances of communal joy through the expression of heritage - perhaps through tradition and ritual we as humans can find comfort in acts that connect us to our past, in turn figuring out who we are and how we got here.

About Alex

Alex Kurunis is a London based photographer. Born in Greece, raised in England, Alex’s dual heritage has informed his eye for photography; from experiencing the juxtaposition of two vivid yet different cultures from a young age. Having graduated in Social Anthropology (LSE), Alex’s work remains rooted in social documentary, human interaction, and tradition or customs that bring people together. He is especially intrigued by instances where displays of tradition intersect with modernity. Alex approaches and interacts with his subjects with warmth and trust, which in turn becomes implicit in his impactful imagery. Be it through intimate portraiture, or candid imagery embedded with movement and feeling of a moment, Alex’s style and use of colour makes for a distinct vision of humanity.

Tami Aftab

The Rice is on the Hob is a collaboration between Tami Aftab and her father. Tony Aftab lives with short term memory loss, that occurred as a result of an accident in operation almost 30 years ago for his brain condition hydrocephalus. Despite his memory loss impacting his day-to-day life, he’s never forgotten the dishes of his childhood in Pakistan. Food and cooking are now for Tony a coping mechanism for living with a chronic disability.

The project lives as a photo-meets-cookbook, inside there are 16 of Tony’s recipes and a multitude of his handwritten memories. Alongside a foreward by Jyoti Patel, and a 4-page interview between the father and daughter. This project has been supported by WeTransfer. £5 from each book sale is donated to Muslim Hands, to rebuild homes destroyed from the 2022 Pakistan floods.

About Tami

Tami Aftab is an English-Pakistani photographer based in London. Her work touches on subjects of intimacy, family, identity and play. Aftab has collaborated with clients such as Stella McCartney, Apple, Burberry, Net-a-Porter, National Theatre, Atmos, GQ, WeTransfer, Vogue India and British Vogue.

Zaineb Abelque

Through objects of personal spiritual significance, Zaineb seeks to reconcile her dual experiences as a Muslim woman in the West. Photographing Islamic ephemera in her family home she examines their aesthetic value. Creating a dialogue that resonates with many across the SWANA region and among Muslim-identifying individuals.

Reflecting the tension between the maximalism often found in the Global South and the minimalism imposed by Western ideals, highlighting the complexities of cultural hybridity. Using traditional photographic techniques, Abelque upscales and creates photograms of these objects. This process becomes a means of finding comfort between two worlds, examining the intersection of spiritual and aesthetic value within indigenous and cultural rituals. Her work offers a meditative exploration of identity, ritual, and the fluidity of belonging.

About Zaineb

Zaineb Abelque is a Moroccan British self-taught photographer based in London. Her work explores themes of community, faith and identity. Abelque’s images often reflect her experiences as a Muslim woman and child of the diaspora. With the intent to explore familiarity as a feeling, her work is rooted in human duality.