I Was Born Here
V&A East Storehouse
2026

‘How do ideas of ethnic and cultural purity, prevalent at the time the Torrijos ceiling was created, continue to echo in our language and politics today?

The work is situated underneath a Spanish ceiling made in the late 1400s, a period that saw the rise of Spain’s colonial empire and the replacement of centuries of multi-cultural exchange with a monarchy that prioritised religious and ethnic purity.

The tapestries in this gallery question how anti-immigration policies and language draw on longer histories of exclusion. The central tapestry references the Home Office vans that circulated east London in 2013 encouraging self-deportation. The tapestry to the right combines political references from late fifteenth-century Spain with racialised struggles in east London. The tapestry to the left celebrates the diversity, creativity and commerce of Newham’s Queens Market.