3 months. 90 days ago. Using my Irish mum’s status, I declare myself the mistress of the Jamaican plantation my enslaved dad descends from.

November 2024. Factory International. Beneath 4 family portraits, I descend Bette Davis stairs. Wearing a £2000 bespoke denim ball gown. Join my 12 guests at my decadent candlelit table. The atmosphere is gothic, fairytale, intimate, epic.

My guests read 8 vignettes. Micro-memoirs, that span my 65 years. We unpack the subtext. 4 sessions are photographed. Select photos paint the 8 vignettes’ backdrops. A unique 24-page child-like picture book. Telling my 3-dimensional memoir set inside its historic context.

 I don’t feel the same as I did before I took this action.

Last week I am offered to go to Wye on Hay, the book festival, to join the author on stage to talk about a book I contributed to called We Were There. My immediate reaction is I no longer need to prove myself to anybody. I want to go to the festival for free for a fee. But I don’t care about the topic. I don’t need anyone’s approval anymore. I decline in the end.

Over the next few Sundays, I’m gonna attempt to unpack this change meaningfully. It also gives me the opportunity to unpack the 11 In the Ruins of the Big House events that happened over 3 days. It seems too big to unravel today. It has taken me months just to feel 100% in my own skin. Nothing drastic. Just the aftereffect of thinking about something for 4 years. Passing through it. It being and doing nothing you imagined. Then looking at what it did.

90 days, they say, is a good enough length of time for me to able to make sense of it. Though, I’m a little sorry I didn’t capture more of it when it was happening. But life is like that. You’re living it. Or you’re reflecting on it.

Photograph. Lowri Burkinshaw (@lowriburkinshawphotography)