Spotlight on Heather Marks
9 January 2026
Heather Marks is a writer, artist and curator with a decolonial practice working with and against the archive to recover voices lost to colonial records. We are excited to announce that Heather has been appointed the 2026 Researcher who will be researching and investigating the Devon Education library collection here at the Box.
Heather's work combines research with critical fabulation in works that blend film, archive material and performance most recently in Fugitives in the Archive (Spike Island, 2024), a short film which surfaces the hidden history of people escaping slavery in Georgian Britain, and an exhibition of the same name at Bristol Central Library.
Heather is currently artist-in-residence at the National Portrait Gallery in London, where she is exploring Global Majority sitters in 16th to mid-19th century portraiture in Britain. She also works across the creative sector as a producer and communications consultant.
You can find our more about Heather's past project by reading a BBC article, 'Hidden history of fugitive slaves revealed'.