Debbie Meniru

About

Curating

Writing

The Fried Yam Project

Possession

Is the artist a victim or a perpetrator? Is the artwork compliant or in control? A short story about Anna Perach's Possession series.

March 2025FictionContemporary Art

Daydreaming with the Night

Exploring Louise Beer's latest body of work – Earth, a Cosmic Spectacle – and thinking about how to reconnect with the stars above.

December 2024Contemporary ArtNatureInterviews

A Love Letter to the Middle Child

What do middle children and middle-aged artists have in common?

October 2024Contemporary Art

The Alchemist

A short story about art lessons at school and learning to love the colour brown.

September 2024FictionRaceContemporary Art

Speculative Writing as Art Interpretation

An exploration of what might happen if museums loosened their grasp on 'the facts' and embraced speculation, emotion and plurality.

April 2024MuseumsFictionFried Yam

On Queering Minimalism

A semi-fictional text on Jyll Bradley’s photographic self-portraits and her minimalism sculpture. Published for the exhibition Within a Budding Grove at Pi Artworks.

September 2023Contemporary ArtNatureFiction

Holding Hands in the Museum

Living in busy London where I don’t even know my neighbours’ faces, I have never thought I was lonely. And yet, the kindness I felt in the facilitators’ willingness to extend this gesture of intimacy was novel to me.

November 2022Contemporary ArtReviews

Notes on Growth

Reflections on what it means to grow something, inspired by my dad and the work of Jyll Bradley.

September 2022Contemporary ArtNature

Mapping Identities

Looking at the usefulness of categorisation as a way of understanding the world and its inhabitants, by way of Lina Iris Viktor, Octavia Butler, Emma Dabiri and David Attenborough.

August 2022Contemporary ArtRaceNature

Dancing in the Museum

Thoughts about surveillance in museums and how we might all have a bit more fun if we could escape that feeling of being watched.

October 2021Museums

Hairy on the Inside

A personal reflection on Lindsey Mendick at Cooke Latham Gallery, PCOS and me.

April 2021Contemporary ArtReviews

The Gee's Bend Quiltmakers

Thoughts about quilts, about my nana, and why we should value art and objects that show signs of wear.

April 2021ReviewsContemporary Art

How did the African collection end up in the basement?

After twenty years in the British Museum’s basement, Africa is due to be given greater prominence by a new initiative announced this month. But how did the African collection end up underground in the first place?

March 2021MuseumsRace

Ghosts in the Museum

A tour around a Bristol landmark revealed some ghosts that had been haunting the city all along.

March 2021RaceMuseums

Fried Yam in the Museum

I had long considered my dad to be a ‘poor communicator’, but reading Things Fall Apart made me reconsider what I want from communication in museums and in life.

February 2021MuseumsFried Yam