"The front room is an archive of aspiration, memory and belonging. In this place, objects acquire meaning through the people who gather around them, and ideas of “home” are continually negotiated between generations."
The first iteration of 'A New Home, Still Ours' mapped the broader architecture of diasporic living, examining the domestic spaces through which histories, identities and inherited traditions are carried forward. 'Act II: The Front Room' narrows this exploration to one of its most charged spaces: the room in which the private becomes public. Across Caribbean households in Britain, the front room has long held particular significance, a space of arrival, hospitality and pride, carefully composed for guests and important occasions. Yet beneath its formality lies something more intimate: an archive of aspiration and memory, where objects acquire meaning through the people who gather around them, and ideas of "home" are continually negotiated between generations.
Rather than reconstructing the front room as a historical interior, 'Act II' considers it a living cultural space, bringing together furniture, textiles, painting, photography and object-making to explore how it continues to evolve within Black British and Caribbean diasporic life. For second- and third-generation creators, the room becomes less a static showcase and more a site of exchange: for conversation, music, storytelling and self-expression, where inherited domestic codes are revisited through a contemporary lens.
'A New Home, Still Ours: Act II / The Front Room' brings these histories into dialogue with the practices of Rolstudio by Holly Rollins, Dharma Taylor, Alesha Pryce, Demi Danka, Milan Young and over breakfast by Jamilah E. Toni, curated by igotathingforchairs / Denise Chua. Here, the front room becomes both subject and setting: an intimate architecture of memory and belonging, where the past is lived with, rearranged and made new.
