Loading Events

Francine Hajilou’s latest work is underpinned by notions of destruction, rebirth, loss, and change and uses ideas and language related to physical and psychological trauma as a springboard to investigate creatively a series of cataclysmic events in the natural world and to narrate life in the Anthropocene – Delve: a search for words that rhyme with hope, is both cautionary tale and quest.

Folkestone has recently experienced a series of landslips, that have torn away the familiar, revealing fragility and instability where there was once stability and certainty. In response to these local geological events, Francine is exploring the insights she has gleaned from a variety of shifting physical landscapes not only locally, but across wider geographical and temporal spaces.

Throughout this project, Francine draws deeply on her Jamaican heritage to frame her understanding of ideas such as upheaval, world-building, joy, and resistance. For SALT+EARTH 2024 Francine will share her titular interactive visual poem Delve. Inspired by visual artist Ellen Gallagher’s process of accretion, erasure, and extraction, Delve will allow the audience to interact with it; creating a changeable, polyphonic poem that uses text, organic, and inorganic materials, including found chalk from both Samphire Hoe in Dover and Caps Blanc Nez in Calais (a tribute to Kent Downs National Landscape and the Parc Naturel Regional des Caps et Marais d’Opale joint ambition become a cross channel Geopark).

Social media: IG: @francinehajilou @franhajiloupoetry

Accessibility: Kollectiv has wheelchair access for the upstairs level from The Old High Street, wheelchair accessibility for the downstairs level is from Tontine Street.