Erika is an artist, researcher, curator and educator. Her practice is primarily research-led and manifests in multiple formats. Whilst organised around the principles of contingency and participatory structures, there is a leaning towards the moving image, referencing distributed media in the form of cinema, gallery-based works, internet and digital practices. Evolving from an interest in anthropology and the moving image, the work is often informed by specific trans cultural, geographical or physical contexts. Ongoing research focuses on the postcolonial, transnational and decolonial – working with archival artefacts, exhibition histories, received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movement of ideas, people and objects. Particular interests have included the discursive connections between the technology of cinematic green screen space to that of the museum and its technologies of dislocation (with particular focus on the colonial Museum in ‘Malaya’ and the repatriation of objects – with no shadow); the digitisation of collective cultural memory and cloud architecture through the prism of ruins, hauntings, and mnemonic collapse; the methodologies and processes by which historically over-looked or ‘forgotten’ subjects are re-animated (The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver series explores through a series of 6 works a Malayan expert weavers importance to post-colonial discussions around historical omissions and art historical canonisation with particular reference to the Singapore context) and finally how might machine learning or Ai inform collections and their management nationally and transnationally. 

She hopes that the project creates opportunities for inter-disciplinary discussions with participants whose differently situated positions will contribute to challenge and inform critical approaches to the complexities of restitution, repatriation, and returns in relation to objects, people and histories. The project brings together urgencies and tensions around social justice, power, communities, institutions and nations, but equally a diverse and invested group of researchers and specific geographies which she hopes will inform her ongoing research and practice.