Roo, the work and the wider research

Roo Dhissou is an artist and doctoral researcher who works with communities, diasporas and her own histories. Using community engaged practice, craft, cooking, performance and installation she explores how communal and individual identities are formed.

Roo has worked with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, New Art Gallery Walsall, The Bluecoat, Tate Liverpool, Primary, Eastside Projects, Ikon Gallery and more recently internationally in Spain, Canada and Poland via residencies. She is currently working on a practice-based PhD, fully funded by AHRC. Her title is, Cultural Dysphoria: exploring British Asian women artists’ experiences through arts practices. Roo is the recipient of several awards, most notably the Tate Liverpool artist award 2020 and is part of permanent collections in New Art Gallery Walsall, Surrey Art Gallery and The Arts Council Collection.

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“I’m never sure what box to tick on an equal opportunities form. Am I British Asian, Indian, where’s the box for Panjabi? I feel like I could be in between these boxes, I am beyond these boxes. I explore this notion within my inner practice, (work I make spiritually) and my outer practice (work I make collaboratively). That’s not to say that the two are mutually exclusive practices. I cannot separate one from the other in that they inform one another, one cannot be without the other, they collaborate, collectivise and sometimes cohabitate spaces.

I explore the relationships and connections we have with each other, because I feel this is where our formulation of self comes from. My identity is shaped around my communities. I’m interested in multiplicity in culture and how that is conducive to ideas of belonging and home. I work across mediums and practices, the main threads being community, hospitality and service. These are Sikh values, Panjabi values and societal morals too. The English translations do no justice. How can Sangat and Seva ever be quantified in the language of the coloniser? Equally, I’m aware of the inter-politics of my own culture, the orthodoxies of powers, of caste politics and prejudices. There are no solutions, only complexity, entanglements and conflict. In between it all is a space of ‘sistahood’, trans*cultural kinship and community in the most queerest of senses.

Through my practice I enjoy learning and exchanging ideas. I believe there are no authoritative figures on knowledge and so through participation and engagement, I facilitate discourse around race, gender, disability and social class. It’s not always an easy conversation, conflict is necessary, dialogue can create conflict. When I say facilitation and collaboration, I think of equity not equality. How can conviviality work to create these relationships? How do we avoid or repair the bad ones? How do we know the difference? In and amongst this I also advocate rest, slowness and saying no. “