This ongoing documentary project explores Black representation through the domestic environment. I am documenting my family life in our South London home as a living archive shaped by the everyday, centring the ordinary as a form of resistance.

In our living room, my mum uses her iPad from her usual spot on the sofa, the room lit only by her lamp because the main light is too harsh. When guests come, we gather around the dining table to eat, drink, and debate, as though we are holding court. My sister moves between us, phone in hand, recording everything, building her own archive as she goes. At times, my mum calls from another room, and no one moves, knowing the first to stand will be the one to go. We disagree, we argue, we cuss. Small frictions, familiar disagreements, the quiet negotiations of being together. Within these ordinary exchanges, I begin to understand how our lives exist both within and against what is expected of us.

Focusing on the ordinary, I approach everyday life as a form of quiet resistance. I refuse the demand to render the Black body as exceptional or exemplary, resisting these narrow terms placed upon the Black subjects. As Kathleen Collins asks, how do we divest ourselves of the need to be extraordinary? This work sits with that question, allowing space for presence without performance.