Eileen Perrier

Bio

Eileen Perrier

Born: 1974 -       

(London, U.K.) 

Lives and works in London. 

Eileen Perrier’s work has been widely exhibited since 1999, including The Photographers' Gallery, (London, UK); Tate Britain (London, UK); The Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK), the touring exhibition Africa Remix, which included the Hayward Gallery (London) and The Centre Pompidou (Paris, France). 

Perrier has also been an artist in residence at Light Work (in partnership with Autograph ABP, New York, USA); at Playing The City at Kunsthalle Schirn (Frankfurt, Germany); and has collaborated with Tate Britain as an invited artist for their education programme, BP Family Festival: Close Encounters of the Art Kind. Her work is installed as part of a portrait commission with King's College London titled Portraits of a Global Law School. Additionally, Perrier has created a commissioned double portrait that is part of the permanent collection at the Foundling Museum.

Artist Statement

"I was born and raised in London coming from a cultural background of Ghanaian and Dominican parentage, this dual heritage has presented me with questions around, placement, cultural identity and diversity.

My early personal projects draw from a long tradition of African portraiture since my first visit to Ghana in 1995. 

Colour photography was my gateway into showing a vibrancy not readily found in the media's reportage coverage on Africa and Africans. Images which I encountered at this time were black and white imagery of Africa and  africans being effected by famine. 

 My objective was to communicate my initial impressions of visiting Ghana, with my mother, who had not been back to her home country for over 30 years. This journey allowed me to feel more grounded in my identity and changed my understanding and relationship with what it meant to be a Londoner of  African descent."