I Was Born Here, Shahed Saleem

Artist Shahed Saleem asks ‘How do ideas of ethnic and cultural purity, prevalent at the time the Torrijos ceiling was created, continue to echo in our language and politics today?’ The Torrijos ceiling at V&A East Storehouse was made in the late 1400s, a period that saw the rise of Spain’s colonial empire and the replacement of centuries of multi-cultural exchange with a monarchy that prioritised religious and ethnic purity. The tapestries in this gallery question how anti-immigration policies and language draw on longer histories of exclusion. The first tapestry, Queen’s Market, celebrates the diversity, creativity and commerce of Newham’s Queens Market. The second tapestry, Home Office, references the Home Office vans that circulated east London in 2013 encouraging self-deportation. The third tapestry, For God and Gold, combines political references from late fifteenth-century Spain with racialised struggles in east London.