
I fantasised about being her. I imagined my text messages as hers. Voice notes from her besties. My camera roll full of pictures and videos she took. My days filled with her looking through my eyes. Out at the world and leaving her mark.


Single channel video with headphones. Duration: 04:44.
Installation views of A Bedtime Story at Arts House, 2022.

Jabu Nadia Newman is an award-winning artist and filmmaker who works through the mediums of photography and videography. Using an agenda of pushing intersectional feminism her work is largely based on the different and complex identities of South African women. Newman independently wrote and directed South Africa’s critically acclaimed feminist web series The Foxy Five. Newman was commissioned by NOWNESS, British Film Institute and the British Council to write and direct a short film exploring diaspora aesthetics and issues of afro-futurism, The Dream That Refused Me (2021) which won two awards at the Ciclope Africa Awards Festival as well as a Silver Cannes Young Director Award. Her newest short film Inside Out premiered at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival 2021. Most recently Newman won Bronze for the Shots EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) 2021 New Director of the Year Award.
- Installation photos by Jody Haines