Opening at Big Pit National Coal Museum on Saturday 31 May 2025, Sadia’s pieces explore how radical movements of the past exist in international solidarity by forming connections between Wales’s history of mining and strike, and resource extraction and labour movements worldwide, and offers a fresh perspective on Wales’s colonial and industrial past.
Supported by Welsh Government through the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan, Perspective(s) is a pioneering initiative that brings together seven culturally diverse artists to explore the deep and often unspoken connections between Wales and global histories of empire, migration, and resistance.
Working in collaboration with Llantarnam Grange and Big Pit, Sadia has created Signals - a film, a sound installation and a pewter sculpture and installation that encourages visitors to critically engage with the past and its ongoing impact today.
Sadia Pineda Hameed said: “Signals is a response to my time working with Big Pit, considering the site as a museum of memory and oral histories around workers' rights and strike action - which is more relevant than ever. Big Pit’s collection holds many symbols for unarchivable, underground organising and international cooperation.
I wanted to explore the ways in which symbolic objects are able to resist being historicised in both a museological and colonial sense, moving beyond signifying and towards signalling radical action. Signals imagines the collection and site not as commemorative and disused, but as activating and talismanic.
The film, sound and sculptural works speculate on how Big Pit itself can become a transmitter, not just for strike legacy, but for solidarities with struggles against exploitative resource extraction in the global South today."
The Perspective(s) exhibition is hosted across all seven Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales sites, with each artist shedding light on hidden histories embedded within the national collection. Sadia’s installation at Big Pit invites audiences to reflect on and explore how radical movements of the past exist in international solidarity, fostering dialogue about representation, power, and identity.
Sophie Lindsey, Marketing Officer, Llantarnam Grange said: “It has been a pleasure to support Sadia to develop new work across both Big Pit and Llantarnam Grange. From labour vouchers and alternative value, histories of colonial and folk charms, to covert communication as methods for resistance, Sadia has created parallel exhibitions and interventions across both sites that delve into different parts of her research and museum collection.
Signals questions the role of the museum. Rather than simply holding relics of the past, how can a museum continue to show solidarity and support to contemporary communities? What knowledge or strategies can be shared? And how can a museum built on radical action extend across borders to international mines and workers being exploited today?”
Perspective(s) opens on 31 May at Big Pit National Coal Museum, Blaenafon and runs until 31 August. Visitors are encouraged to explore the thought-provoking installations that redefine how Welsh history is told.
Alongside Signals, Sadia’s solo exhibition Agimat will be on display at Llantarnam Grange, from 31 May until 16 August 2025.
About Perspective(s)
Perspective(s), is a collaboration between Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales which seeks to bring about a change in how the visual arts and heritage sector reflects the cultural and ethnic diversity of our society. The project is supported by the Welsh Government as part of a collective effort to meet the culture and heritage goals of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan.