Jay Bernard is an artist whose work is interdisciplinary, critical, queer and rooted in the archives. They were named The Sunday Times/ University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year (2020) and are the recipient of the Ted Hughes Award (2017) for Surge: Side A, a cross-disciplinary exploration of the New Cross Fire in 1981.

Something Said (2017), an exploration of Black British history, has screened in the UK and internationally, including Aesthetica and Leeds International Film Festival – where it won best experimental and best queer short respectively – and CinemAfrica. Their body of work also includes Crystals of this Social Substance (Serpentine Pavilion 2021), Poet Slash Artist (Manchester International Festival, 2021), and Joint (Southbank Centre 2022).

Look Again: Complicity (2022) their most recent literary work is a timely meditation on how art can help us to reckon with a contested history and an uncertain future.

Related exhibitions & events

• WeTransfer presents: BLUE NOW