Strangers in London: Art, Migration, and the Shaping of Identity

Becoming Brent presents:

Strangers in London: Art, Migration, and the Shaping of Identity

Join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion exploring art, migration, and identity in London — inspired by “Strangers,” a book by Tate Publishing by Ismail Einashe which explores art through the lens of migration. We will discuss how notions of belonging have shaped places like Brent and how movement across borders has influenced London’s cultural fabric.

This timely conversation will bring together journalist and writer Ismail Einashe with Gilane Tawadros, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, and Ornella Mutoni, a documentary filmmaker and producer. The discussion will be moderated by Louise Benson, Director of Digital at ArtReview. Together, they will delve into how art, migration, and identity continue to shape London and its communities.

SPEAKERS

ISMAIL EINASHE

Journalist and writer

Ismail Einashe is a journalist and writer whose work on migration and refugee issues has won multiple awards. He has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, BBC News, Foreign Policy, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, The Nation, ArtReview and Frieze. He is the author of Strangers (2023), a book by Tate Publishing which explores migration through the lens of art. He also co-edited Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere (2019), a collection of critical essays examining how migrants are represented in European media. He is a member of Lost in Europe, a cross-border journalism project investigating the disappearance of child migrants in Europe. He is an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University and serves on the editorial board of Tate Etc., the magazine of the Tate Galleries. He has won several awards for his work, including the 2024 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism and a 2019 Migration Media Award.

GILANE TAWADROS

Director of the Whitechapel Gallery

Gilane Tawadros is the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. She was formerly Chief Executive of DACS and Co-Director of the Art360 Foundation. She was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London, chaired by Professor Stuart Hall, which, over a decade, achieved an international reputation as a ground-breaking cultural agency at the leading edge of artistic and cultural debates nationally and internationally. She has written extensively on contemporary art and curated a number of international exhibitions. She has worked with and advised a number of leading international cultural organisations including Tate, Hayward Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, International Foundation Manifesta, Venice Biennial and Forum for African Arts. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation, Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation and Member of the Advisory Committee for the Yale Center for British Art. Recent publications include The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Stuart Hall: Detour to the Imaginary: Selected Writings on Visual Arts and Culture (Duke University Press, 2024). In 2024, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sussex for her contribution to the visual arts.

ORNELLA MUTONI

Documentary director and producer

Ornella Mutoni is an emerging documentary director, producer and cultural worker whose work explores collective healing, and intimate and sensitive portrayals of the legacy of trauma. Her directorial debut The Things We Don’t Say (2024) premiered at Aesthetica Short Film Festival in November 2024 and was distributed by the Guardian. She has extensive experience working in prime-time broadcast TV and video journalism for award-winning production companies such as Lightbox, Hidden Light and Acme TV. She has worked on a range of documentary styles for UK, Australian, Dutch and American broadcasters and is committed to empowering underrepresented communities to tell their stories. Ornella has also been working on the PopChange initiative at Counterpoints Arts, which has led her to host film panels, curate film programmes and advocate for better migrant and refugee narratives in film and TV.

MODERATOR

LOUISE BENSON

Director of Digital at ArtReview

Louise Benson is a writer, art critic and editor based in London. She is currently Director of Digital at ArtReview, where she commissions widely on the visual arts, film, books and music. She is a trustee of Wysing Arts Centre, where she engages with the economic models that provide direct support for artists. Previously she was Deputy Editor at Elephant, and before that was Editor-in-Chief of POSTmatter, a magazine about modern life and culture in the digital age. As a writer she is interested in exploring what happens at the edges of the art world, going behind the scenes to hear the stories of those who play a crucial role in the production of art but who often remain invisible. She is interested in how art gets made, and in who gets to make it at all. She is also the co-founder of Scenic Views, an independent interiors magazine focused on overlooked design histories.