There is an Elephant in this Room

Best Foot Backward was conceived in response to the architecture of Sala Brasil at the Embassy of Brazil in London, a former P&O ticketing hall whose decorative programme retains maritime motifs and traces of its history as a space associated with travel and departure. Working with these existing elements rather than treating the gallery as a neutral container, the installation used textile, plaster and sculptural interventions to redirect the architecture, producing a spatial experience in which orientation, reflection and scale became deliberately unstable.

The title loosely echoes the Curupira, a figure from Brazilian folklore whose backwards-facing feet are said to leave tracks that lead travellers in the wrong direction. Rather than illustrating the myth, the exhibition takes this gesture of misdirection as a structural device, connecting it to recurring concerns in the work around escapism, uncertainty and the construction of unreliable narratives. The space becomes both route and obstacle: familiar enough to navigate, but continually resisting a clear beginning, ending or direction.