During the third pandemic lockdown of January 2021, when books became the only form of travel and just when I thought I had memorised every nook and cranny of my home, I came across a startling discovery while reading Dan Hicks’ book The Brutish Museums.

My flat is located in what used to be the Grand Stores of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. Constructed between 1806 and 1813, my building served as the primary storage facility for the military equipment of the British Army. In the book, Hicks mentions that the Grand Stores became the staging post for the British Army’s punitive expedition to the Kingdom of Benin in February 1897.

I started seeing things in my flat in terms of the language of plunder. Tropical plants trying tohat grow in a climate that they weren’t accustomed to; ingredients in my kitchen that were products of painful histories of extraction; objects of personal significance that echo kidnapped artefacts carrying specific spiritual significance. In these drawings, Benin bronzes from the British Museum are measured and arranged next to objects in my home. I want to find a non-empirical way of accounting for these stolen artefacts, tracing the narrative of dispossession according to personal and emotional dimensions. The title mimics the format of museum accession codes, linking the year of the raid with my address. Home becomes the site where shared histories of loss can be contemplated.