The Monkeys Stole My Hair
Digital artworks on giclée print, 59.4 x 42cm, 2026
 
Artwork Statement
An oversized Black woman contorts herself into a white house too small for her body, actively turning away from an open door her size. Outside, five red colobus monkeys play with a kanga. The work explores cultural displacement and liminal space: the house represents forced enclosure after slavery, yet the woman refuses to leave. Confinement becomes both imposed and chosen—a complicated form of survival. The saturated colours reject the muted palette expected of trauma work, speaking to embodied memory and the everyday ritual of adapting to spaces not built for you.
Relation to theme: Cultural displacement, liminal space (inside/outside, staying/leaving), embodied memory, everyday ritual of adaptation
 
Artist Bio
Rukaya Salum Ali-Springle is a Zanzibari-Australian multidisciplinary artist and intersectional feminist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her research-led practice, working at the intersection of digital media and critical theory, investigates diasporic memory, glitch as decolonial resistance, and the somatic retention of colonial violence through a dreamlike, Afrofuturist lens. Her work explores trauma, mental health, spirituality, and the narratives of marginalised BIPOC communities, while powerfully centring Black joy and resilience.