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A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the screens can be seen a close up of some rough red rocks. To the left of the image, a black 1980s style radio sits on a white shelf at waist level.

Tako Taal

At the shore, everything touches

11 December 2021 - Sun March 2022

This exhibition debuted a new body of work by Glasgow-based artist Tako Taal.

Taal’s practice often considers the paradoxes of black subjectivities, and her artistic practice evokes cited, spectral and physical bodies to undermine history, destabilise images and disrupt ideas around identity.

A film still, taken from a wooden boat, of a calm sea with a small island to the top left hand side on the horizon line, which is about a third from the top of the image. A small part of the boat can be seen on the bottom left. The sky is cloudless and the sea and sky are a similar grey-blue.

At the shore, everything touches, was the first iteration of a project that considers the changing nature of Taal’s family’s home village in The Gambia – Juffureh. This village is renowned for its proximity to the British slave fort established on what was once known as James Island, now named Kunta Kinteh Island referencing the central protagonist in Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots. This new body of work centred on this village – its geography, historical significance as a trade post and fort during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the ways in which its histories are used and instrumentalised in the present day. In this context, the artist looked to Juffureh as home, as a tourist site and as a point of departure for recent migrations.

This exhibition comprised a new video and sound installation, SAMT utterance_01 (how a name becomes a step, a rhythm, a loop), featuring sound design composition by Claude Nouk, accompanying collage and facsimiles of familial photographs and documents belonging to the artist. Taal’s new works also sat alongside two photographs from Maud Sulter’s 1987 series Sphinx, which serendipitously explore representations of these landscapes in Juffureh over thirty years ago.

At stake in Taal's work are the psychic structures of colonial relations and the question of how vivid they remain in the present. In this project, she reconstructed whispered anecdotes and artefacts from family archives to trace the shifts that merge and split boundaries between body, land and the state.

Artist Interview | Tako Taal: At the shore, everything touches

A photograph of two square framed artworks.

About the artist

Tako Taal was born in Wales and lives in Glasgow. She graduated in 2015 from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. She was a 2019 RAW Academy fellow at RAW Material Company, Dakar and Artist in Residence at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018-20.  

In 2021 Taal was shortlisted for the 2021 Margaret Tait Award; her work is presented at NADA House, Governors Island, New York; and she is co-programmer of GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW, LUX Scotland's artists' moving image festival. Other exhibitions include: Glasgow Women’s Library, 2019; Grand Union, Birmingham, 2018; CCA Glasgow, 2017; Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal, 2017; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2019; New Contemporaries, Royal Scottish Academy, 2016. 

This exhibition was supported by The Elephant Trust and The Turtleton Charitable Trust.

DCA's 2021 Exhibitions Programme has been supported by the William Syson Foundation.

Exhibition Notes

 Listen to an audio version of the Exhibition Notes for Tako Taal: At the shore, everything touches here.

Click here to download the Exhibition Notes for Tako Taal: At the shore, everything touches
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Exhibition images

A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the right hand screen can be seen a tree and rocky landscape, and on the left a close up of a lush green leafy plant.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the screens can be seen a close up of some rough red rocks. To the left of the image, a black 1980s style radio sits on a white shelf at waist level.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of an installation containing photographic prints incorporated onto a wall composition with an earthy orange painted ground rectangle on a white wall. To the left of the image can be seen some hanging plastic sheeting. Small objects are laid carefully on the floor under the wall based work.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.
An installation photograph of artworks on paper. A line of a4 sheets on a white wall can be seen to the left of the image. To the right, a mainly blue artwork with a check-like pattern hangs on its own.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the right hand screen can be seen a tree and rocky landscape, and on the left a close up of a lush green leafy plant.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the screens can be seen a close up of some rough red rocks. To the left of the image, a black 1980s style radio sits on a white shelf at waist level.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of an installation containing photographic prints incorporated onto a wall composition with an earthy orange painted ground rectangle on a white wall. To the left of the image can be seen some hanging plastic sheeting. Small objects are laid carefully on the floor under the wall based work.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.
An installation photograph of artworks on paper. A line of a4 sheets on a white wall can be seen to the left of the image. To the right, a mainly blue artwork with a check-like pattern hangs on its own.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the right hand screen can be seen a tree and rocky landscape, and on the left a close up of a lush green leafy plant.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of a two channel video installation, with two screens leaned on the floor against a dark orange wall. On the screens can be seen a close up of some rough red rocks. To the left of the image, a black 1980s style radio sits on a white shelf at waist level.
Photography by Ruth Clark.
A photograph of an installation containing photographic prints incorporated onto a wall composition with an earthy orange painted ground rectangle on a white wall. To the left of the image can be seen some hanging plastic sheeting. Small objects are laid carefully on the floor under the wall based work.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.
An installation photograph of artworks on paper. A line of a4 sheets on a white wall can be seen to the left of the image. To the right, a mainly blue artwork with a check-like pattern hangs on its own.
Photograph by Ruth Clark.

Gallery Walkthrough | Tako Taal: At the shore, everything touches