BLACK AND BLUR 2023 | Captured by Abdul Yusef @rounddrop for PHOTO 2024
Commissioned by International Photo PHOTO2024.

The Black and Blur Anarchive is a transdisciplinary project building a living, relational archive of Black queer memory, kinship and cultural survival. It values ambiguity, intimacy and incompleteness, resisting singular narratives and centring gender non-conforming ways of being. Shaped by feminist epistemologies and care, it constructs a relational space where memory and imagination blur and intertwine as mutually sustaining forces.

The anarchive unfolds through analogue photography, moving image, sound and oral histories, shaped over time by dialogue and reciprocity. People who engage with the work inform how they are present, including the possibility of remaining abstracted or absent, with agency, protection and informed consent held central.

While it draws from research across Australia, West Africa and the UK, Black and Blur is not concerned with cartography in a conventional sense. Instead, it maps geography relationally, cultivating conditions where Black life is held expansively and futures can be dreamed into being. Much of my work is informed by and contributes to Black and Blur, a living anarchive of memory and cultural survival, for which I hold custodianship alongside many co-authors.

I respectfully acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples, the Traditional Custodians of Naarm, where this project was dreamt and created. This was and always will be Black Aboriginal land. I also extend my respect to Indigenous peoples across the Kulin Nation and to the many nations, communities and cultures of the continents now known as Australia and Africa. I pay my respects to the Indigenous cultures and legacies connected to this project, recognising that the very naming and bordering of these lands reflect colonial systems of control, extraction and imperialism, imposed on diverse nations and territories whose sovereignty endures.

I hold deep gratitude for the privilege of living, working and creating on these lands, and acknowledge that my practice is entangled in these ongoing histories. I remain committed to approaching this work with care, humility and a reciprocal willingness to listen and learn.

PHOTO2024_LilahBenetti_BlackandBlur_QueerPHOTOInstallationView_PresentedbyMidsummaandPHOTO2024_CreditWillHamilton-Coates_CourtesyPHOTOAustralia00001.jpg

A loose constellation of films that resonate with the textures of proximity, memory, care and complexity when I think about BLACK AND BLUR