From Sunrise to Sunset is one outcome of your award at the NAE OPEN 2024, an annual exhibition at New Art Exchange (NAE) created through an open application process for Nottinghamshire-based artists and Global Ethnic majority artists living anywhere in the UK. There, you contributed works from ego death (2023), drawing on psychiatrist Carl Jung’s concept of ‘the Shadow’. The series has been shown across London, including as part of the Taylor Wessing Photo Prize 2023 at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), and Africa Writes 2023 at the British Library, co-curated by Kalaf Epalanga. Could you talk about your relationship with Nottingham and your experience developing this particular exhibition?

I had no prior connection with Nottingham. I heard that the gallery focused on global majority artists, and that was what initially interested me. I'm based in London, and there are so many possibilities here that I often just stay in London. Still, I was really interested in exploring places outside of London, especially as I saw an art show about the Blk Art Group in Nottingham a few years ago. I realised how many Black artists were centred in the Midlands. I think that was my interest in making any kind of connection there.

This work's taken years to make. I initially wanted to make the work years ago, but wrestling with this idea of work addiction has been quite difficult. In most of my projects, there's some kind of not epiphany, but learning and looking back, but with this, it's definitely ongoing. That's why I've called it Part One because I have no idea what Part Two is going to look like. This is definitely a journey I'm still undergoing, decoupling value and productivity within my practice.

NAE gave me the platform, but I really needed time and money too. St John's College, University of Oxford, offered a residency, which provided me with the time and resources to create the work. That was really crucial; without that, I definitely wouldn't have been able to make this project, and then another piece of work that has been formed [from the residency too]. Lastly, the FT Weekend’s Emma Bowkett commissioned me to do some work as part of the exhibition, and that was really where I began putting the camera in front of these questions. So those three organisations kind of formed this exhibition for me.

It's been challenging because it's very revealing, and it's something I'm still processing. It feels like a very intimate, raw piece of work; some interesting reflective images have come out of it.

ego death was also inspired by Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue (2016), the basis of Barry Jenkins’ film Moonlight of the same year. This body of work takes its title and conceptual starting point from Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel, The Nickel Boys (and RaMell Ross’s 2024 film adaptation), which follows Elwood Curtis, a young African American boy unjustly sentenced to Nickel Academy, a fictionalised version of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. In 2023, you performed in Jocelyn Bioh's Scool Girls; Or, the African Mean Grils Play at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, a remarkable production exploring shadism and colourism in relation to beauty. Is the school, as an educational institution, a particular interest that spans your work across disciplines?

It's literally a coincidence! Maybe I'm unconsciously interested in learning, relearning, and unlearning things, but that's not been any kind of conscious thread.

This project also concerns your own ability to ‘perform wellness’. Can you talk about the relationship between rest and work?

The project's about identifying that my value, my goodness, my sense of self, isn't based upon how much work I produce - that's really it. I think I didn't want to really talk about that or admit that, because it felt like quite a privilege to rest. Rest felt like a luxury, because rest wasn't just represented as stopping, it was like going away on holiday, spending money and time. Meanwhile, some people can't not work. I've come from a working-class background, where everybody was working non-stop.

But it's more about when there is time to rest, knowing that you deserve it, you deserve to stop. That's where Tricia Hersey’s book, Rest is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life (2022), came up, and these ideas that someone is benefiting from your constant labour, and wrapping your value in work. This system benefits capitalists, and it’s kind of a trick. Owning a house and having children, this book made me question whether these ‘dreams’ are my desires or whether they have been imposed on me. I've accepted them as my own, and I feel that I will work to the point of exhaustion for them.

This project is my attempt to understand what my own choices were when it comes to work.

I encountered your practice through 'Le Cake-Walk' (2020), a series exhibited at the Centre for British Photography in London in 2023, from which the NPG has recently acquired a number of works - hopefully, for display again soon. Concurrent with your exhibition at NAE is In Place of Fear by Simeon Barclay, who also draws on performance in his artistic practice. Could you talk further about that series of work and how it relates to your current practice?

That project was about ownership and reclaiming space, being and using my voice entirely in my practice. Many Black artists are inspired by Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), [who Agyepong performs as in these photographs], as she spoke quite boldly about the difficulties of Black, female actors on stage. I was trying to conjure a sense of bravery from her life.

But yeah, this work has nothing to do with that! And I love that my practice keeps jumping. I'm really excited to be an artist who can keep making different kinds of work, and they can continue to look at them in new ways. For instance, you mentioned the project in between, ego death, which was about confronting versions of myself that I've buried or hidden.

I've been told by a lot of people to make work that kind of looks the same, as a signature. But the reason I wanted to become an artist has nothing to do with consistency or selling art. Even that, how much selling work has suddenly become part of [art’s] value systems, I'm really trying to push that away, because what does that mean? If I make art that feels really important to me, and it doesn't sell, what, the work isn't important or valuable? No, I don't want any sort of financial definition of my work.

So many artists made work that nobody cared for whilst they were alive. They’re long dead, and then someone says the work is important, so suddenly the work is important. I don't want my worth to be tied up in anything external. So, I'm glad I can kind of challenge that and talk about that.

So I have no idea where this work will develop, which is exciting. But I also think it's going to take quite a while to make, because I always want the work to feel genuine and not like I'm trying to get to some sort of conclusion. I might not come back to it for 10 years, but I'll just let that happen organically.

Heather Agyepong – From Sunrise to Sunset, She Worked to Reform Herself: Part 1 is on view at New Art Exchange (NAE) in Nottingham until 24 January 2026. Hear the artist in conversation with Lisa Anderson on 12 November 2025. 

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