Story: ‘Exposure’ is a reimagining of Eileen Binney, sister to boxing legend Albert Binney, living in Sheffield from the 1920s onwards.
The recovery: Wemmy reflexively responded to articles written about people like us. She seeks to challenge the representation of Blackness in each one while capturing the hardships and joys of the people who came before her. Wemmy’s approach is playful, considered, rooted in her sense of self and always poetic.
Sobolo
Come on Eileen,
Tell me sweet things and
like a chocolate calla lily in the wind
uproot yourself from the heavy soil
that keeps you, guards and buries you
under the weight of thousands of
archival pages, the weight of the ink
that forgot to write you and left
You at the bottom of the stoneware inkwell…but none remembers better than the soil herself
She felt your warm hands as you drank
the hibiscus tea your daddy made you
beautiful pinks, purples and browns
freshly heated and served in the finest
whitest china to his favourite girl
She knew your favourite shirt
wasn’t the white one made of silk
but the shiny black one with glitter, and netting
that caught your coils when you brushed your hair too hard
and it sometimes caught your tears and tantrums too
She knew you snuck out of Darnall
in your mother’s shoes to go dance
to jazz in the big city, yes she remembers
that your delicate feet were tied to your beautiful future
in spaghetti straps at the time
She knew about your soulful singing voice
and how you sang better when your eyes were closed
since it felt like no-one was watching you
Your brown skin and eyes cloaked from scrutiny
Your brown skin held and loved instead by
Billie Holiday and her musical melodies
She even whispered to the Sun
and made her promise to
free you from the confines of life
of time itself, but only
when your belly was full and your soul was ready
And what of the Moon?
well, she got wind of the way
the Sun got to touch your skin in
the English summertime
and how the rain got to drip drop
along to the rhythm of your heartbeat
how you squeezed the lemon zest of life
from each raindrop into your mouth
and just drank, you drank.
I was drawn so much to her and the almost disappearance of her from any English record. I wanted to know more about her, and still do.
