Four Nations: A Portrait of Us — Impressions Gallery

Four Nations:
A Portrait of Us

Bradford 2025 begins early!

Look out on billboards now for Aïda Muluneh’s portraits of Bradford’s unsung heroes.

Bradford 2025 and Impressions Gallery have invited acclaimed photographer Aïda Muluneh to create a major new artwork for Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture – and you can see the first part now.

Four Nations: A Portrait of Us celebrates unsung local heroes from across Bradford and three other UK cities: Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow. Aïda’s powerful photographs pay tribute to the people who work quietly but tirelessly to make their part of the world a better place. We’re making sure these community superstars get the recognition they deserve by installing their portraits on Bradford billboards in September and October 2024.

The Bradford local heroes featured on billboards around the city are:

  • Alyshea is a nationally award-winning doctor with disabilities who works hard to care for patients with mental health problems at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust.
  • Carol is a health advocate who works tirelessly within Bradford’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities – including through Bradford’s Black Health Forum, which promotes health and wellbeing among African and Afro-Caribbean residents.
  • Julie is a climate activist and one of the most active members of Bingley Morsbags group. She’s made hundreds of free bags out of donated materials – saving tonnes of material from landfill and reducing our reliance on plastic bags.
  • Shannon runs a food bank and a food waste shop, as well as family events and clubs supporting vulnerable adults. She’s introduced countless families to new cultural experiences, created jobs and built a truly inclusive community.
  • Riffut worked as a social worker in Bradford for 35 years, caring for some of Bradford’s most vulnerable families.
  • Stafford is one of the founders of the Bradford West Indian Parents’ Association, which helped integrate new arrivals from the Caribbean to the UK, and is now the Deacon of Westgate Baptist Church in Manningham.

The project also features local heroes from:

  • Belfast: Billy, a community and justice activist; Israel, a Black health advocate; and Susan, manager of a women’s centre.
  • Cardiff: Natasha, an activist for disability equality; Paskaline, a community arts advocate; and Mujib, a youth worker and choreographer.
  • Glasgow: Adele, a cultural worker; Anita, a human rights and equalities campaigner; and Linda, a musician, writer, publisher and activist.

A Portrait of Us can be seen on billboards around Bradford until 6 October 2024, and you’ll be able to read more about these local heroes at bradford2025.co.uk.

Aïda Muluneh’s photography project concludes at Impressions Gallery in January 2025 with Nationhood: Memory and Hope, a major exhibition featuring many of the portraits featured in A Portrait of Us – plus new work shot in Bradford, Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow during summer 2024.

Photo © Aïda Muluneh.

A Bradford 2025 and Impressions Gallery commission in partnership with Belfast Exposed, Ffotogallery Cardiff and Street Level Glasgow.

Four Nations: A Portrait of Us — Impressions Gallery
© Aïda Muluneh

Artist

  • Four Nations: A Portrait of Us — Impressions Gallery

    Aïda Muluneh

    Born in Addis Ababa in 1974, Muluneh graduated from Howard University in Washington D.C with a degree from the Communication Department with a major in Film. Her photography has been published widely, and can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Hood Museum, The RISD Museum of Art, and the Museum of Biblical Art in the United States. She was the 2007 recipient of the European Union Prize in the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako, Mali, the 2010 winner of the CRAF International Award of Photography in Spilimbergo, Italy, and 2018 CatchLight Fellow in San Francisco, USA. In 2019, she became the first black woman to co-curate the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition and in the following year, she returned as a commissioned artist for the prize.

    She has been a jury member for several photography competitions, most notably the Sony World Photography Awards and the World Press Photo Contest in 2017. She has also been on various panel discussions on photography, including the African Union Cultural Summit, Art Basel, Tedx/Johannesburg, and she gave the renowned Sem Presser Lecture at the World Press Photo Festival in Amsterdam in 2019. A Canon Ambassador, Muluneh is the founder of the Addis Foto Fest (AFF), the first international photography festival in East Africa held since 2010. As an educator and cultural entrepreneur, she continues to develop projects with local and international institutions in Ethiopia and Côte d'Ivoire. Photo © Joel Williams.

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