Durre Shahwar (2025)
Ffotogallery Project Space
Public Preview: Thursday 15 January, 6-8pm. All welcome.
One of the Good Ones is an exhibition that responds to Ffotogallery’s archive, and reflects on how place, documentation, and symbolism take on different meanings under the threat of erasure and the impact of seeking asylum.
Documentation of material and seemingly ordinary objects becomes fraught when faced with loss and (dis)placement, creating an oscillating attachment and detachment to them.
Autofictional layering of text and images capture the process of (re)constructing an identity and challenge how power is assigned through documentation. Meanwhile, the psycho-geographical remapping of Adamsdown, Cardiff, becomes a site for preserving individual memory and narrative within a collective experience.
Through a process of re-writing, re-visiting, re-presenting, One of the Good Ones addresses gaps within the Ffotogallery archive while presenting a personal counter-archive which challenges dominant ways of documenting and assigning value.
About the artist
Durre Shahwar is an award-winning writer, editor, and artist whose work examines identity, narrative form, and the politics of representation. Her practice is research-led and spans autofiction, essay, and visual documentation, deconstructing established frameworks to reveal overlooked perspectives within social and environmental contexts. Central to her practice is community, where work is formed in collaboration and conversation with marginalised writers, artists, researchers, and groups.
Durre has a PhD in Autofiction and Pakistani-Welsh Identity from Cardiff University, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She was the recipient of a Future Wales Fellowship in 2022, and the Lapidus International Creative Bridges Award in 2025. Durre is the co-editor of the essay anthology, Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature (2024, 404 Ink). Her writing has been published widely, most prominently in: Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (Dead Ink Books), Welsh (Plural) (Repeater Books), Homes for Heroes 100: Council Estate Memories (Bristol Festival of Ideas), Artes Mundi, Visual Verse, Azeema Mag, Poetry Wales, BBC.
Her visual works have been shown in exhibitions and screenings at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (2022), Migration Matters Festival, Bradford (2022), g39, Cardiff (2024), The Turner House Gallery, Penarth (2023), Green Man Festival (2022), and Arts & Heritage’s Online Screening Room (2024). Durre is also a member of LUX Moving Image Critical Forum, London.
About the commission:
This commission was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of Ffotogallery’s ongoing archive project. Research into the Ffotogallery archive revealed a lack of diversity, with communities such as queer and disabled people underrepresented in the collection.
To address this, Ffotogallery commissioned two artists—one LGBTQIA+, one disabled—to explore the archive and create new work in response. The resulting pieces will be acquired into the collection, expanding and diversifying the archive to better reflect Ffotogallery’s values and mission.
Following an open call, Durre Shahwar was selected for the Disabled artist commission, and Rhys Slade-Jones selected for the LGBTQIA+ artist commission, with Cwm Here Now shown late last year.