What constitutes power, and who gets to hold it?

To Shift A Stone, is a two-part exhibition at Chapter and Amgueddfa Cymru by Sophie Mak-Schram and collaborators that explores how power is experienced, shared and challenged within these cultural organisations and with their publics.

Across our entrance, images of overlooked artworks, objects and materials from Amgueddfa Cymru float across the sky. Made visible and untethered from the museum and its categorisations, these images sit alongside those from Sophie’s own archive. The repetition of the phrase on hold speaks to the continual promise of change in organisations towards more equitable and decolonial futures, creating and waiting for this change can feel like being endlessly on hold.

Inside our building, interventions by Sophie and collaborators create conditions for change, reimagining how we might gather, collaborate or work together across differences. This idea draws from close listening to various perspectives and experiences of Chapter across 2023-2025. Sophie’s work orientates us towards hope, from being on hold to holding on.

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About the artist

Sophie Mak-Schram engages others in place-specific work around power, collectivity, knowledges and futures. Working with others both as method and as form, this work draws on experiential, artistic, decolonial and collective practices to convene, co-learn, re-imagine and invent. Sophie draws on personal and shared experiences of cultural difference, coloniality, race and gender.

Often using the metaphor of the ‘tool’ – as a poetic and practical object – they address how we know, who we consider ourselves in relation to, structures of power and ideas of belonging(s). Sophie convenes, facilitates, writes, reads, and makes objects to learn with or listen to.

Various images of Amgueddfa Cymru collection items, including: Maquette of Regarding Guardians of Art © Dhurva Mistry, Thalia Campbell’s ribbons, courtesy of the Campbell Archive and custom font based on Hong Kong takeaway menu (Amgueddfa Cymru, 1993.248/146.44), designed by Sophie Lindsey.