Artist
Statement

Enam’s enchantment with textile making begun as a little girl with a visit to a small weaving community somewhere in her ancestral home of Eweland, Ghana. Weaving is intrinsic to the Ewe tribe’s way of life; forming part of their storytelling, their ceremony and celebration. Its processes are heralded as meditative and healing and its origins cosmic – bedded in the myth that spiders taught the Ewe’s to weave. A tale she learnt in later years on artistic pilgrimage, a light bulb moment which justified her long held obsession with the spider’s web. An obsession which has unveiled itself in numerous works, including her final year BA Textile Design body of work.

Enam’s journey is an ever-spinning web of self-discovery. Her latest chapter, the revelation of her talent for performance. A skill uncovered through current body of work, Nude me/ Under the Skin. Nude Me investigates hosiery, particularly how this seemingly simple garment, a staple of western women’s wardrobe has for the black woman been another mode of marginalisation, ostracisation and castration.

Finding she needed another vehicle to tell the stories and personal epiphanies she was unearthing, performance became fundamental. Each Nude Me performance activates Enam’s artwork through movement and spoken word. These activations create powerful live spaces for healing both for the artist and her audience.

It is these personal experiences of craft’s healing power that fuels her advocacy. With her work, Enam seeks to deliver our collective consciousness to a positive place of awareness by creating live spaces of healing. Particularly addressing our global violent history, which prohibits us as a humanity from moving forward in a positive light. By using craft as her portal she pushes us to face the truth of our dark history and the emotions it brings forth, learn acceptance and heal. Through this process she brings us to a point of spiritual awareness both of self and humanity.