“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
At Figuration, we believe good stories deserve to be told, no matter where they come from. To tell more of these stories, we have created a series of short animations celebrating those we find inspirational and remarkable. Have a look at some of those we’ve profiled so far below.
Through short, accessible animations, we encourage audiences to think about certain questions: how do visual languages help tell stories in the age of New Media? What ideas can we reveal and inspire through moving image? And what kinds of stories really need to be told in today’s world?
Dr Ronx is an emergency medical doctor who appears on CBBC’s Operaion Ouch!; a queer, black, androgynous intersectional feminist; and one of Sarah Jane Moon's iconic models in her Figuration-curated exhibition Queer.
JG Ballard is a seminal science fiction writer, famous for works such as Crash, High-Rise, and The Drowned World, the latter of which was a key inspiration for Graham Martin’s Figuration-curated exhibition Soon It Would Be Too Hot.
Norman McLaren, pioneering animator and founding member of Association Internationale du Film d’Animation
Bernardine Evaristo, activist and author of the Booker Prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
Louise Bourgeois, fine artist whose work deals with stress and domestic trauma. ‘I am not what I am, but what I do with my hands’
Christine Goodwin, a trans woman and trans rights activist whose testimony to the European Court of Human Rights played a deciding role in the UK’s legislation of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
Stanley Spencer, Modern British painter who shone a light on the daily realities of ordinary people in the First and Second World Wars. As he himself put it: “I am on the side of angels and dirt”.
The Mirabal Sisters, revolutionary women known as Las Mariposas (The Butterflies) whose radical work and untimely deaths led to the downfall of a brutal dictatorship and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Isaac Julien, an artist and photographer whose recent installation ‘Lessons of The Hour’ commemorates the life and work of Frederick Douglass, a Black abolitionist from the slavery-era United States.
Anita Roddick, an activist and businesswoman whose animal rights-aware brand The Body Shop changed the face of the cosmetics industry.