Zarna Hart
3rd Wrld
Redefining the 3RD WRLD Ravista & Zarna
Panel: National Story
We will share our practice of curating and publishing verbal and visual stories, as an act of heritage-remembering and archive building in the post-colonial context. The paper will include an introduction to our platforms, 3rd Wrld and Broken Englizh, and a case study of one of our most recent projects ‘Keep in Touch’.
There are physical and metaphorical places that give meaning to the word ‘home’, a home that goes to define our individual cultures and histories as peoples. The collaboration between 3RD WRLD and Broken Englizh facilitated the expression of what home, culture and history meant to the Open Call’s participants, hailing from Tanzania, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, China, the Caribbean Islands, Brazil, Chile, Albania, and India, to name a few. The Open Call had two parts; published written stories on Broken Englizh’s blog and a 17 artist group show, ‘Keep in Touch’, at Host of Leyton, in November 2023.
The writers and visual storytellers spoke to the ways in which their ideas of home and heritage have been challenged, misconstrued and transformed in the post-colonial reality of today. These stories addressed layers of ethnicity, race, class, nature, migration, social structures, disability, and heterosexist normatives through the first person, lived experience.
This initiative is based on the belief that it is the smaller, personal, seemingly ‘insignificant’ stories that have the power to humanise, empower and repair the broken dignity of a larger people or place. By working alongside these creatives in an effort to publish and exhibit both written and visual work, we are confronting the gaps that exist in the wider art and literary industries of the West.
Together, 3RD WRLD and Broken Englizh run this non-profit programme annually to celebrate diversity and encourage dialogue on the fundamental concept of shared histories and human experience.
Zarna is a Trinidadian art director, curator, lecturer and writer based in London. Currently teaching at UAL Camberwell College of Arts and Kingston University, Zarna focuses on design theories and practices towards anti-colonialism, and means of archiving in the post-colonial context.
The mêlée of her Caribbean heritage and academic background inform her sensibilities in her design practice and global perspective of culture, as she often works with designers, artists, institutions to design, curate and write about projects of all scales. Zarna is an alumnus of Cardiff Metropolitan University (2014-17) and the Royal College of Art (2022-23).