Ffion is a multidisciplinary non binary artist. They're an Associate Director of House Of Absolute, sound & film producer, composer, instrumentalist, singer, poet and dancer, born and raised in Wales. Ffion is also a Welsh speaking person of mixed Welsh Grenadian heritage. They completed their degree at London Contemporary Dance School and California Institute of the Arts 2013.
Ffion explores humanitarian politics through psychoanalysis, body language and spirituality and is interested in the contexts of race, gender, culture and identity. They create through the influences of ritual, expressing various aspects of the human experience.
They work with various disciplines such as voice, text and poetry, film, visual and digital art, and music production, performative art, exhibitionism and experimental expression including contemporary, hip hop, fem and krump dance and holistic therapy and martial arts.
In this film Ffion talks about two film works, the solo ‘Hearth’ and the group work ‘Sanctuary’, both of which reflect a deep sense of belonging and community and explore the complexity and richness of intersectionality within Welsh culture.
"Hi my name is Ffion Campbell-Davies, I’m a multidisciplinary artist, I work with dance, movement, sound production and film. The most recent work that I have done, explores my relationship with Wales, which is my birth land, and my relationship with Welsh language and my sense of community.
There are two specific works that I want to talk about. One is called Hearth. The title being an intersection of two words; Earth and Heart. It really explores the visibility of a person of colour, that relationship between the visual aspect and the sensory aspect of my father tongue. What levels it speaks to in terms of political and intersectional layers of class, race and culture in relation to Welsh history. The erasure of women in history, and also the erasure of different types of indigenous and ethnic groups, the stories that deserve recognition. It’s important to represent people of Welsh origin, who come from diverse and different backgrounds and experiences. I wanted to create something I’ve never seen before.
The second film which I worked on is with a group of women. It’s a reflection of my sense of belonging and my sense of community in Wales. It’s also a body of work that I think is really important in terms of the narratives we have around motherhood and Mother Earth. The intersecting relationship between how we respect the earth and how we respect women of colour.
I think that there are a lot of conversations and nuanced subjects that need to be continued to be explored, in order to unpack and really understand for many people of all different kinds of backgrounds, how we can find authentic solutions that are long term, that can preserve the rights, the acknowledgments, the resources and respect for different identifying people of heritage, and in relation to that also for how we treat, communicate and actively respect our land. There are a lot of commonalities and reflecting values and principles that go hand in hand with all of the things I've just said. One of the reasons why I am creating film work in the way that I am, is to bring awareness and to highlight the values that we need to practice more of in the mainstream society."
Curated by Marc Rees for #PethauBychain