Launch of 'Anak Where Did We Stay?' (2026) by Sadia Pineda-Hameed

Rasheed Araeen’s chakras, spouting waves, Beatlesmania, a basking shark, hula dance, an Enoch Powell protest, tidal islands and seafoam floating into the air. The archives converge across time to tell the story of the artist’s mother’s migration from one archipelago to another: the Philippines to the British Isles.

The film becomes a gathering site for personal and collective experiences of journeys, resilience and belonging. Road trips unexpectedly reenact the archive, footage finds itself out of context, voices commentate the film as if rewatching a home movie together; mimesis (acting out a story), associations and giving the material its own freedom are central to the retelling.

As camcorders became more accessible from the 1970s onwards, home movies unconsciously became a way to rebuild personal archives after colonial displacement, extraction and erasure. Anak Where Did We Stay? sits in dialogue with Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai (1776), depicting the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain and on display at The Box until 14 June 2026, considering how stories of movement are held, remembered and reimagined beyond institutional representations.

Sadia Pineda Hameed is a Filipina Pakistani artist and writer based in the Ebbw Valley, Wales. She works with 16mm film and hi8 video cassette formats, sculptural installation, text and performance. Her work explores shared and inherited trauma, and ideas of telepathic communication from an anti-colonial perspective. It imagines what future tools for resistance, value and communication might look like.

Commission details

The commission can be seen on the big screens in the Media Lab gallery on the first floor of The Box until the end of 14 June 2026. Opening hours are 10am-5pm Tuesday to Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays (closed on Easter Sunday).

The Commission is part of the Reimagining the Film Archive Programme (2023-2026) supported by the BFI.