16 Threads: Our Ancestors’ Dreams - Private Viewing Xtravaganza & Artist Talk

Exhibition Details 📍

Unit 2 Art Gallery, 8–10 London Road, St Leonards on Sea, TN37 6AE
7–9 November 2025

Private Viewing Xtravaganza and Artist Talk: 7th November 7:30pm (ticket required, available on the door)

Open to the public: Saturday 8 & Sunday 9th November, 12 midday - 8 pm (no ticket required)

Ambient Jade presents a moving immersive photographic series exploring ancestral memory, with music by Jabez Walsh, curated by IOCO. Join us for a weekend of visuals, sound and conversation.

About the Work: The exhibition features 32 portraits, indigenous crafts, immersive sound, video and light-scapes all woven into a multi-sensory love letter to the resilience, beauty and multi-dimensionality of black queer people. It is part-celebration, part-protest and an investigation of queer narratives through time in honour of both visible and unseen ancestors.

Through intentional arrangement of lighting, space and the invitation to bring to the shoot music, stories and objects that connect them most to themselves and their ancestry, Jade’s subjects become part of a ritual of reclamation, self-determination and rebalancing black queer diasporic dysphoria.

.Works will be available to view and purchase.

Artist: Ambient Jade uses the art of photography to create textured visual moments that carry her identity within them. Her work is a platform for conversation, investigating the passions within her subjects, pushing experimental limits together and capturing that co-created ambience through her lens. Jade’s photography evades oversaturated planning through her focus on spontaneity, her attunement to the aura of her models and expressive coaching.

As a visual artist, she freely implements graphic design elements into her photography through the use of colour to overlays and distortions that add a surrealist dimension to her talents. She has featured in numerous international magazines as a photographer and model, has published an art book entitled Provoke and has recieved a certificate of merit for participation in the 2021 Luxembourg Art Prize. Jade is the creative director of @thenarrativestudio, shooting celebrities like Nicole Scherzinger and Will.I.Am in a distinct vintage style. Her first solo exhibition launched in March 2020 at Yard Arthouse in Birmingham.

Composer: Jabez Walsh is a multidisciplinary composer, vocalist, conductor and creative care coordinator. Over the past 15 years they have perfected their craft working as a session musician, vocal coach and choir conductor with For The Culture Collective (FTCC). The interwoven, genre fluid soundscapes they create facilitate healing, deep listening & restoration. 

As a care leaver, access assistant and death doula in training, Jabez has learned how to lead with love, listen to spirit and work intuitively when coordinating creative projects, funerals, weddings and when working intentionally with communities and organisations.

Curator: IOCO (Isaac Oluwatobi Cristy Obisanya) is a curator, artist and wellness practitioner of Nigerian and Romanian heritage whose focus is experimenting with how art rooted in an indigenous worldview can function as a vehicle for re-harmonising disparate units into an interwoven whole. His interdisciplinary practice is a synthesis of writing, sound design, live performance and the curation of visual art that explores themes of heritage, spirituality and holistic wellbeing. Collaborative projects he has contributed to include Fierce Festival, Ozwald Boateng’s SS22 Fashion Show and the VR Film “Black Star Sanctuary”.

We are fundraising for Micro Rainbow, a social enterprise founded in 2012 that provides safe housing to LGBTQI asylum seekers. They organise social inclusion activities to reduce the extreme isolation faced by queer people, facilitate access to employment, volunteering, training and education for LGBTQI refugees, offer advocacy sessions, legal workshops, signposting and collaboration with relevant organisations.

Please contact otuneyegallery@pm.me if you would like to attend the private viewing and cost is a barrier. 

Private Viewing. We are planning to share a moment grounding and listening to the soundscape together for the first time at the beginning of the private viewing so please arrive on time and with your ticket. Tickets will be available on the door. We would invite you to bring something with you that links you to your ancestry and/or heritage. A piece of clothing, jewellery, a photo, a story, a memory - most importantly bring yourself as you are. There will be an artist talk and an opportunity to view the works and merchandise.

Refreshments & beverages are included in the ticket price for the Private Viewing and are provided by Carib De L'Afrique. On Saturday and Sunday, there will be indigenous crafts and international foods for sale alongside the opportunity to purchase the works and merchandise.