The foundation on which my work as an artist stands is in evolving innovative approaches to re-examining the portrait in contemporary visual culture.

Working predominantly in the medium of photography, my images challenge the language and its function outside the central euro-centric frames of reference. They not only investigate subjects in narrative, content and context, but how through the strategic placement they contribute to opening new dialogues in reshaping how we may better connect to the value of representation and personal empowerment, whether participant or viewer.

I believe great portraits are often given not taken, in a space of trust, empathy, understanding and purpose. Being commissioned to photograph these five monumental matriarchs has been a privilege and an amazing experience to be able to pay recognition to the breadth and depth of their endeavours. For it is critically not just what each one of them has achieved respectively, but who these women are intrinsically, and what this collectively symbolises.

It is in this understanding the genesis of inspiration was sparked.

In conveying their stoic resolve, I have employed a strategy of combining contrasting cultural tropes to underpin my approach. Firstly, by inverting pictorially the Eurocentric idea of the ‘Halo’, and secondly by using the strength of light applied to allude to African facial markings, which denote rites of passage and status.

In creating this hybrid re-imagining, homage is made to a shift in thinking, which they have fought to re-present. In this capacity these iconic portraits honour the diversity of strength and the significance of their contribution in the time in which they sit.

Radiating Greatness is not only underpinned by the idea of legacy, but in the concept of how we rethink connecting, content to context through to continuum. The idea of the archive being an ongoing conversation between the present and the future’s past, providing a distinct compass for people to discover and rediscover is the hope of what ‘Radiating Greatness’ will eventually become.

This inaugural study of women of colour in leadership is a beacon to empower young women. To know that they can step forward with confidence and see the possibilities of aspiration grounded in fortitude reflected back at them and to be inspired, because the light of the future belongs to them.