Lal Davies
GS Artists and National Waterfront Museum
BIO
Lal Davies is an award-winning filmmaker with South Indian and Southern Irish heritages. Three generations of her Indian family have been born in North Wales since migrating to the UK in 1919. Lal has an established practice of first-person narrative and short documentary filmmaking in social justice, particularly racial equity, education and heritage contexts and a multi-disciplinary art practice using film, photography and poetry. Lal has shown work nationally and internationally and is an Ethnic Minority Welsh Women Achievement Association (EMWWAA) awardee for her contribution to Arts & Culture in Wales.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Lal is exploring Wales' industrial history at National Waterfront Museum Swansea, focusing on decolonising its connections to empire, and reflecting on her own family heritage and migration story from India to Wales as part of this wider context.
Among other stories, Lal is looking at how Welsh copper ingots exported to India to produce brass objects, generated such wealth for Swansea, earning its nickname Copperopolis. Like many Indian diaspora, Lal’s family brought brass objects from India to Wales.
QUOTE
“My work focuses on historical objects as a portal to unlocking both personal and societal narratives and my background demonstrates how Welsh identity can be complex and nuanced. Perspective(s) is a platform to add my voice to Wales’ ambition to become an anti-racist nation by 2030, through film and visual arts work.”
SOCIAL MEDIA / WEBSITE
Showcase reel:https://vimeo.com/showcase/9808956
Website:https://laldaviesma.wordpress.com/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/laldffilmiau/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/lal.davies & www.facebook.com/ffilmiaucymunedoldavies/
Vimeo:Lal Davies/Ffilmiau Cymunedol Davies
Twitter:@davies_lal
SEVERAL STAGES OF PURIFICATION
Several Stages of Purification was on display at National Waterfront Museum from 17 February – 31 August 2025.
Several Stages of Purification is a body of work concerned with Swansea’s ‘Copperopolis’ era as the world’s foremost producer of copper, notably ingots exported via the East India Company to produce Indian brass, and Methodist missionary activities funded by expansion stimulated by Wales’s status as the first industrial nation.
Set against these historical contexts, film-maker artist Lal Davies considers her own South Indian family heritage in their journey to North Wales from 1919, uncovering untold narratives in Wales’s national story.
