Tako Taal
Tako Taal is a Welsh-Gambian artist, filmmaker, and programmer. She works alongside spectral, cited, and physical beings to undermine history and destabilise images. At stake in her artistic practice are the psychic structures of colonial relations, and the question of how vivid they remain in the present.
Departures
2021
16mm transfer to digital, 3 min. 49 s.
Departures is a video work by Tako Taal that traces personal and collective histories of migration, grief, and memory. The piece features a poem written by Taal’s late father, read aloud by his surviving brothers. Their voices loop and overlap across different locations, accompanying close-up imagery of traditional textiles from their homeland. The patterns, folds, and stitches of the fabrics form a visual map of lineage and movement, connecting generations and geographies.
Developed during Taal’s residency at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery (2018–2020), the work reflects on the familial and historical significance of the artist’s father’s home, Juffureh, a town in the Gambia near Kunta Kinteh Island (formerly James Island), a colonial fort. The town has become emblematic in African-American cultural memory through Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family and its adaptations. Taal situates her family’s experiences within these broader narratives, exploring how histories and myths — particularly those around return, displacement, and loss — are constructed and remembered.
Director & Editor — Tako Taal
Text — Seedy Taal
Speakers — Kaliu Taal & Lamin Taal
Camera Assistant — Alex Hetherington
Lighting — Rowan Markson
Sound Design — Francis Dosoo
Captions — Collective Text