87. SULEYMAN WELLINGS-LONGMORE: A SPACE BETWEEN PROTEST AND RESISTANCE.

Suleyman Wellings-Longmore, ‘Behind Enemy Lines’.

‘The most important signaling moments in my life have followed immediately after some form of disappointment. I’m grateful that in the wake of unsuccessful job applications, heartache and uncertainty, opportunities have presented themselves that have in some way propelled me forward.’ S.W.L.

Please introduce your work 'Behind Enemy Lines’?

This work interrogates how power intervenes in language to silence and fix meaning, whilst simultaneously highlighting the way the disenfranchised weaponize language to challenge the status quo. James Baldwin said, “to be born into the English language is to realize that the assumptions by which the language operates are your enemy”, in detailing the inherent racial bias in our linguistic frameworks. Inspired by the notion of word play – who has the power and privilege to play with words, to write these linguistic rules? – 'Behind Enemy Lines’ reimagines these rules, drawing from the aesthetics of the board game Scrabble, the research of cultural theorist Stuart Hall and the poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah. Inviting the viewer to reflect on how new perspectives can challenge fixed meanings, Baldwin’s quote can be read from one side of the work when viewed from the right angle, whilst Zephaniah’s pixelated face can be seen from the other side. Concealed within the work is a speaker system through which I perform a live mix of a soundscape with audio by Baldwin, Zephaniah, Hall, anchored in dub music – a genre of protest and resistance.

I was immediately very intrigued that you are a human rights lawyer and also a practicing artist...

I balance my legal practice – now centred on migration, protest and more recently, artist rights – alongside my creative practice. Reconciling my social values with my career as a corporate lawyer motivated me to begin creating several years ago. I started to champion my heritage through my art in resistance to feeling othered in my professional and personal environment. I was based in Paris at the time, a city which felt simultaneously inspiring and lonely. On a volunteering trip to Lebanon, assisting asylum seekers fleeing ISIS in Syria, I made my first painting, and I continued on my return to France, painting canvases on my bedroom wall and clay sculpting at a gallery nearby. The lockdown allowed more time to expand my portfolio. Keen to work on cases that empowered others and better aligned with my principles, I pivoted full time into human rights law via a masters at Harvard Law School. It was in America that my artistic practice, which until then combined figuration of Black forms with optical illusions to explore magnificent and mundane moments of my experience, started to be directly informed by the human rights material I was studying. These topics included international migration, critical race theory and criminal injustice. Whilst my artwork now draws from a wider set of influences, my creative and legal practices are united in that, through both I strive to create a positive impact beyond myself. There are also sometimes interesting overlaps between the two - I am part of a campaign called ‘Art Not Evidence’ which seeks to increase the bar for admissibility of creative expression, especially drill/rap lyrics as evidence, a process which disproportionately affects marginalised communities. Protecting the rights of artists is at the nexus of the two practices I hold dear.

You were is the US at a turning point in modern history, how did being there affect you and your practice?

Everything felt pretty historic. I had originally been accepted to study in 2020 but deferred for a year after Covid-19 forced Harvard to take all courses online. Trump was still in power at this point. But when I arrived in 2021, Biden was in, the world was slowly reopening, and things seems a little optimistic. However, soon into my time on campus we saw photos of U.S. border patrol assaulting Haitian migrants at the border, the leak of the U.S Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the appointment of Ketanji Jackson and continued fallout of January’s insurrection, to name a few pivotal moments. I think being a student – learning, challenging, collaborating – encourages an introspection that can leave you feeling the world can and ought to be changed for the better and with its history, influence and network, studying at Harvard Law School definitely developed the belief that perhaps I could be an agent of this change. The discussions, movements, and communities I was a part of in the U.S. encouraged me to be bold in how I applied law and created art to bring about this impact.

The next issue of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) focuses on signals, what have been the key signaling moments within your own life?

The most important signaling moments in my life have followed immediately after some form of disappointment. I’m grateful that in the wake of unsuccessful job applications, heartache and uncertainty, opportunities have presented themselves that have in some way propelled me forward. In a way, each signal is linked the one before. I was selling advertising space on the back of bus tickets after I graduated from the University of Leeds, trying – and failing – to get a graduate job. I wasn’t very fulfilled. After a particularly comprehensive spate of rejections, I took a leap of faith (and what little I had saved) and travelled across Brazil before and during the 2014 World Cup. The experience of being there, travelling by myself for the first time, and meeting people from around the world, proved seminal. I began working on a novel, my first art project, and returned to secure a job to be trained as a lawyer. A few years later, I was in Lebanon trying to bolster my human rights experience in anticipation of a career switch in the face of job insecurity, when I stumbled upon an art store/café in Beirut. The owner and I got on well, and I eventually bought a canvas and started painting, not thinking where it would go. A few years later, I was at Harvard and just opened my first institutional exhibition before receiving yet more rejections (I’m a good lawyer, I promise) after a very gruelling recruitment process – this time to become a human rights barrister. I was also nursing a tender heart after a relationship breakdown. In reassessing my future amidst these changes, I decided it was now or never to apply to art school and commit to further expanding my creative practice. I did and here I am. I think the more you listen to, and act on, the signals around you, the better your confidence and sense of timing gets. These examples perhaps don’t represent concrete signals telling me to do something explicitly, but they have acted as crossroad moments from which my life has taken a different path. In each case, I have centred my own happiness in the face of external pressures, which is perhaps the recurring signal I strive to listen out for.

I was really interested in what you said about how your instinct kept pulling you back to art...

Following my instinct is integral to my art practice, in both carving out the space to make artwork and the actual creative process itself. It was being attune to what I knew felt right – without always being able to articulate the exact reasoning - that first compelled me to begin making art. I knew I wanted to write the novel I had in my mind, to paint the image I held in my thoughts, to sculpt the form I saw when I closed my eyes. I’m a firm believer that you don’t always need to understand the reason for creation or appreciation. When you are scrolling across radio stations and hear a song you like, you don’t necessarily need to be cognisant of the context, history and relevance of the song – you just know you like it. Yes, deep down you may be processing these thoughts, but I think it’s enough to simply want to listen to that tune because it sounds great, to enjoy it as it is and follow your gut reaction. Making and enjoying art is the same for me. Whilst I am now a graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Painting programme, I am grateful not to have been formally art educated until recently. This has enabled my art to be more driven by intuition. Sensing what colours, textures and compositions work together, for example, (the process) has sometimes been trial-and-error, but has developed a robust sense of trust I now have in my artistic vision and how I execute the plans I have. Starting out writing, then painting, expanding into sculpture, moving into sculptural paintings, before wandering down the rabbit-hole of sound performance, design and textile and now contemplating film and scriptwriting, my creative practice has expanded in an organic way, that I sometimes don’t even understand, but find super exciting, propelled by instinct.

Suleyman Wellings-Longmore, Saatchi Gallery, 18th September 2024. Image credit: London Art Collective.

‘Behind Enemy Lines’ by Suleyman Wellings-Longmore was presented as a part of the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’, Saatchi Gallery, London, September 2024.