Tori Daniels
Tori Daniels immerses themselves within an array of different creative practices. From photography and film to creating poetic sound pieces, Tori’s art has helped them to escape and heal during their younger years whilst studying at college. Now Tori uses their work to help others within the Queer and Trans People of Colour Community (QTPOC). For example, they are currently working on an outdoor cinema and film festival for QTPOC which they are anticipating will become a regular event. Tori’s photography and film work very much explores the diversity of people that live in London through a documentary style of shooting. Read on to hear more from Tori as they talk about their journey as a creative and plans for the future.
How did you begin your creative journey?
I’d always done an art-based subject throughout school but I think my actual creative journey, where I realised this is what I have to do started in college when I was navigating through a lot. I was a black girl from Essex, a white conservative area, and I was dealing with the transition from a predominately white and racist school to a very diverse college. However, despite this I was still quite isolated in college just in a different way to my experiences in secondary school. I felt I was not ‘black enough’ to fit in and in general I just seemed to like different things to everyone. I took media studies for A levels and I always found it a drag, I never saw the classroom as somewhere I could express myself or actually learn anything substantial, I wanted to change to drama. Surprisingly this subject I despised and the college I resented was where my creative journey began. There was one project we got in second year where we pretty much got complete creative freedom and access to equipment and at first I didn’t take fondly to the work and the brief, being an indecisive person that can’t commit to an idea. At the time I was just made homeless and had no support from the people around and the educational institution. I was juggling a job and college. I found that project really offered some form of escape and means of communicating a repressed frustration and pain inside me. I started utilising that project and filming wherever I went as I moved homes. I had always written since I was 10 years old but I realised the dimension that visuals or sound gave to my words. I created a poetic sound piece and it was not at all perfect and is still probably on YouTube somewhere but it was truly heartfelt. I grew in love with art and different forms of expressing and to this day sound is such an important medium to me. Media A levels also made me discover photography and film as a medium of communicating and storytelling, which led me to apply for Film practice at London College of Communication (UAL). I applied with the film I made but I didn’t get in. However, I later decided Fine art was the best degree for me to do due to the freedom of alternate mediums.
You study fine art at UAL, how has your degree helped shaped your creative persona?
I study Fine Art, Print and Time-Based Media at Wimbledon College of Arts (UAL), and honestly it has not shaped my creative persona in the way anticipated. Before entering the course I thought I would learn so much, have guidance, support and find my voice and myself. The reality is two years in and I feel as though I’ve learnt nothing from university and I most definitely don’t feel supported, I feel UAL as a whole could be doing better. My university is based in Wimbledon, going to this uni I felt this internalised imposter syndrome and sometimes I’d feel the critiques and comments would feed into that and wouldn’t let me trust my ideas and visions. I often was demotivated and didn’t want to submit work, as I didn’t know if it would fit into their idea of what art is. At times I’d often feel pushed to pursue heavier subjects like the black and brown and queer experience regardless of whether my work as a whole reflected that. I felt as though they were trying to take the easy route and package my expression into a neat box, labelling me that ‘activist artist’ instead of actually taking time to know me, help me find my self as an artist and teaching me the skills that I would need to convey this. On the other hand the sense of being misfitted drove me to find ways to learn and find my creative persona outside of the university environment. I utilise university for the resources that exist but at the moment I am really learning from the world and the creative community. The creative underground scene is my university at the moment and it’s a space where I trust my vision and my story, a space where I don’t compromise my character and I can always reach out to people for help.
You are currently practicing mainly with photography and collage - what inspired your love for these mediums?
With photography and collage they’re not my main mediums. However, I do love them for different reasons. I think what inspired me to do collage is the fact that with all the other mediums I felt pressure to know things, do things right and do my ideas justice. So things like collage, illustration, painting and even sculpting was just that place of no mind for me. Where I didn’t have to think about meaning, depth or a narrative I could just sit with myself and express. Also it’s refreshing to me to every so often get hands on with art. When it comes to photography and film I think the inspiration comes from watching a lot of things on platforms like Nowness and Vimeo etc when I was younger, I used to enjoy watching and analysing short films. I was fond of the art of storytelling and wanted to take pictures and make films that had narratives.
How would you best describe your work in one sentence?
The best way to describe my work, and I mean my actual work as a whole, not the stuff I put on Instagram is probably melodramatic, poetic and sometimes heartbreaking. Although my documentary photography can be described more as just a documentation of youth culture, a coming of age and just a portrayal of different characters that exist in London/in my life.
Your photos have a documentary/in the moment feel to them - what are your techniques for capturing images in this way?
Most my photos are very in the moment, it’s only recently I started getting into more conceptual thought out shoots, but I gravitate towards a documentary style. Despite that I still want the documentation to have an element of surrealism or look like a cut from a movie. So I often try to incorporate colours and lights into real moments. Of course you can’t have professional LED lights and gels on you at all times but little photography tricks I use is carrying different coloured lipsticks and wipes (or coloured plastic bags) and colouring in the flash of a camera and distancing the subject from the background. If you have a friend with you, you can colour in the flash on their phone a different colour and play around with that. It’s an easy trick to use on the go to make your pictures a bit interesting. Also I edit documentary type pictures as if I am colour grading for a film, to give real moments a cinematic film look. I like when images look like they’ve got a story to it or look like it’s a snapshot from a movie.
Are you currently working on any upcoming projects?
At the moment I am planning a narrative focused photo series and it’s exciting but intimidating, because I want to do set design, hair and make up and have actors and a story throughout this series. It’s going to be really demanding of me and I’m going to need more of a team and collaboration than what I usually have but also I have to be patient with it. I am currently looking for a queer black femme to be the main character in this series. I’ve also been working on putting on an outdoor cinema for QTPOC where it would feature underground black and brown creatives to make money to give back to the community and/or these artists. I think things like this could turn into like a regular film festival thing and it’ll be nice for these creatives to have the chance for people to interact with their work beyond social media. My aim is if we can’t get into the film festivals we make our own and I am open to whatever help I can get to make this a bi monthly event.
Who and what influences your work the most?
The people who influence my work and what I want my practice to represent at this moment are Philip Toledano, Carrie Mae Weems ‘Kitchen tables series’, Nan Goldin, Grace Wales Bonner, Harley Weir, Mowalola, Moyosore Briggs, Julian Wearing, Nadine Ijewere and Yoni Lappin. What influences my work is the world around me and probably also how I feel about it/living in it. For me, not to sound like a hippie, but I feel a God essence in everything and that’s my artistic inspiration recently. I source a lot of my inspiration from the exhibition that daily life offers. Every moment can look like a picture. It can look like a beginning, middle or ending, it’s just finding the story in it and capturing it or observing the world, storing it in your mind and recreating these moments and characters as well as making creative choices to give it life (which is what I want to do with my photo series). Life imitates art, art reflects life. This drives my visuals and has been a fundamental part of my writing. I get a lot of influences from family, identity and culture. I like to explore how we present ourselves and why we do so and the conflicts of identity that can occur whilst navigating society. For example, with my Family Portraits I aimed to present a conflict of diaspora that second generation West Africans may face whilst also embracing culture.
What are your plans post graduation?
I don’t want to talk about it. Just kidding but yeah I am scared to be honest. I am not completely sure but I have an idea of what I want the future to look like. I don’t focus on the future too much as I try practicing trusting the Universe more so, I don’t go crazy as a black creative living in London. However, from my actions now, after graduation I will probably be doing something community centred and probably study a Master’s that would aid me in doing so. I see myself putting on regular events that I can create art installations for and other underground creatives could look forward to, create for and have the opportunity to see who they are as artists. Post graduation, I want to focus on building something of my own and a safe space and platform for myself and other people like me. Whether that is a magazine or creative agency or collective that protects the community. Something I’ve definitely planned for post graduation is screen writing and focusing on getting funding to create my first short film, Cam Girl.
interview GABY MAWSON
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