WOME-WHOLE
2025
3 Bronze manwhole covers
45 cm diameter
Commissioned by the Old Diorama Arts Centre as part of Regent’s Park Estate Story Trail, initiated by Community Champions Regent’s Park.
As part of the Old Diorama Arts Centre’s Storytrail, we created a series of playful permanent public artworks that subvert traditional manhole covers, making an alternative collection of WOMAN - WHOLE covers.
As women, we found that text in the public realm usually bombards us with messages about not being whole; with advertising urging us to buy things to feel a sense of wholeness. Societal pressures, fueled by media and cultural standards have led to unprecedented poor mental health in women: about our bodies or what is expected of us as mothers. We wanted to do the very opposite - place text in the public, made by and for women, empowering them to reflect on what it means to be whole.
We ran workshops with local mothers on the Regents Park Estate, asking them to reflect on what makes a woman whole in relation to self-empowerment, resistance and resilience. From these conversations we created three bronze cast WOMEN-WHOLE covers, embedded in the paving of Everton Mews, Camden, London.
As we play with the gendered terms “Manholes V Woman Whole” we challenge ideas like Tracy Emin, who said “There are good artists that have children. They are called men.”
We like to think we are “good artists that have children”, making powerful, playful and fun contemporary interventions in the public realm, challenging what art is and can be, made by women!
Produced by Old Diorama Arts Centre in partnership with Camden Council, Fitzrovia Youth in Action and University of the Arts Central Saint Martins through T-Factor.
Funded by Camden Council and EU Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Programme.
Cast by The Lost Foundry. Graphic design by Katie Tooke.
“It was an absolutely incredible empowering and creative journey, with lots of love and care… I have been so lucky to be part of it!
Bahja Mahamed, Regent Park Estate resident
