To coincide with Black History Month and Diffusion Cardiff International Photography Festival, Butetown History and Arts Centre and Third Floor Gallery are coming together to create an exhibition by two female American photographers Janna Ireland and Sheila Pree Bright.

Sheila Pree Bright

A woman’s life can be influenced by capitalism, idolism, racialism and aestheticism. In Sheila Pree Bright’s “Plastic Bodies”, it is the very intricate relationship between the female form and the popular Barbie doll that is put into question. Pushing the understanding of one's own body against the plasticity of the toy, Bright in this series of portraits invites us to open our minds to finding the ism’s behind the images.

Janna Ireland

Janna Ireland explores the materialism, conformism, elitism and establishmentarianism of her extended family. Exploring the aged, opulent old house of her husband’s grandfather she draws connections between its strictly feminine, ornate rooms and a fairy-tale self-portrait of herself as an elegant society princess; the kind found within the pages of the glamorous old magazine Ebony. Themes that are central to Ireland’s work are domesticity, isolation, black identity and the performance of femininity.

Bringing these two bodies of work together, we explore through a kaleidoscope of isms about how contemporary black American women view themselves in their environment and society.