The Child Returned
Liana Nanang
Liana Nanang is a multidisciplinary storyteller with Black-Bermudian, Iban-Malaysian and British parentage. Her work as a writer, sculptor, painter and performer navigates race, nationality, trauma, resilience, spirituality and colonialism.
Her artwork has been exhibited in the Charman Prize at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art (2019, 2021), where she won Best Use of Materials (2021). She has both artwork and poetry in the 2022 Bermuda Biennial.
She says: “My creative work is an exploration of my identity and experience as a neurodivergent, Black, Indigenous, Woman of Colour in a world – and on an island – that would demand my assimilation and my silence. Each of my submissions claims part of that story.
“This painting of my partner and his teenage son represents the act of resistance that is loving Black Bermudian boys. Generations of trauma have deprived us of Black fathers. The title is also the translation of my partner’s reclaimed Yoruba surname.”