Dear Mr. Shakespeare
‘Dear Mr. Shakespeare’ (2016)
Dear Mr. Shakespeare is an exploration of the author’s intentions when writing Othello, by exploring the play;s racial themes in a historical and contemporary setting, Phoebe Boswell draws attention to the parallels between immigration and blackness in the UK today.
The film was commissioned by the British Council / Guardian as part of their Shakespeare Lives short film collection to commemorate the 400th anniversary since the playwright's death. (dir. Shola Amoo / DoP Stil Williams)
Artist Biography
Phoebe Boswell is a multimedia artist who works intuitively across media, centering drawing but spanning animation, sound, video, writing, interactivity, performance and chorality.
Exploring themes of migration, memory, freedom and belonging, underpinned by a transient and diasporic consciousness, this tends to culminate in layered installations, which affect and are affected by the environments they occupy, by time, the serendipity of loops, and the presence of the audience. Boswell was born in Nairobi, Kenya, grew up in the Arabian Gulf, studied at the Slade School of Art and Central St Martins, and currently lives and works in London. In 2019, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists and was the 2019 Bridget Riley Drawing Fellow at the British School at Rome. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow, and is represented in the United States by Sapar Contemporary, New York.
Her drawings, installations and video work have been widely exhibited, and her forthcoming institutional show HERE at New Art Exchange in Nottingham is due to open in May 2021.
You can view more of this artist's work at https://www.phoebeboswell.com or via their social @phoebe.boswell.
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