Sechele Mtitimila

Unnamed KAR 

This series of small, hand-painted glazed tiles draws from the Imperial War Museum's archival photographs of the King’s African Rifles (KAR). These portraits depict African soldiers conscripted into British colonial forces—figures often sidelined in official narratives of empire and war. Rendered on humble cardboard tiles, the work contrasts the overlooked fragility of these lives with the supposed permanence of imperial memory carved in bronze and stone.

By translating photographic records into intimate, painted forms, Mtitimila reclaims and recontextualises these images, asking viewers to consider whose stories are preserved, whose are silenced, and how we remember. The piece forms part of a broader practice that interrogates the aesthetics of colonial power through archival disruption, participatory engagement, and accessible forms of storytelling.

Lasting Impressions (In Development)

This is an ongoing participatory project involving the creation of small ceramic tiles, each impressed with a unique mark—whether a design or a simple handprint. Each tile becomes a kind of intimate fingerprint, a record of presence and identity, linking back to a specific person. The participants include members of the Black diaspora as well as people living in Scotland today, reflecting the complex entanglements of migration, memory, and place.

The proposal envisions these tiles being installed at the base of existing statues of David Livingstone, recontextualising these monuments with a contemporary, human counter-narrative. By embedding the marks of living individuals into the landscape of public memory, the work offers a subtle but powerful intervention—one that confronts the lingering legacies of empire with tactile evidence of the lives it continues to shape.