Forma

Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban

Captive Heart
Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban
8 February - 27 April 2025

Captive Heart is a new site-specific installation by London-based artist duo Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban. Continuing the artists’ exploration of diasporic identity, personal cultural heritage and popular culture, the exhibition marks the first in a series of public interventions at Forma’s brand new street-facing public art space on Bermondsey Square.

Drawing inspiration from Selena, the “Queen of Tejano Music”, the duo reflect on the enduring experiences of the Latinx community along Old Kent Road. Selena was a celebrated Mexican-American musician who bridged Latin music and mainstream American pop culture until her tragic murder at 23 in 1995, and has since become an icon within the queer community.

Developed at FormaHQ studios throughout January 2025, Captive Heart draws on Selena’s legacy to explore themes of love, loss, and cultural transformation, examining how identity, memory, and community persist amid urban change. Reflecting on Bermondsey’s evolving neighborhoods, the artwork invites viewers to consider the interplay between personal histories and collective cultural narratives in the face of urbanisation and erasure.

Nina and Athen say:

Captive Heart is a love letter to the lifespan of romance and the obsession, hunger, beauty and loss it entails. Reflected in the pockets of the ‘Old School’ patchworked by the gentrification of Bermondsey (and London at large), the work hones in on a romantic interpretation of grief. The things that could have been, the songs that were never sung, melodies lost between shop shutters and buses that never came.

Who better to hint at this than Selena, a familiar face to the locals who have built up the Old Kent Road as a hub of the Latin community, and to those more recent locals, franchising and buying the area, a face they struggle to place. Love songs written and translated, secrets shared and forgotten. The things we carry with us and the things that fade away.


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Captive Heart

Details
Captive Heart
Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban
8 February - 27 April 2025
24/7

Join us for the launch event
8 February, 4-6pm
rsvp@forma.org.uk

Forma
15 Bermondsey Square, London
SE1 3FD


For press enquiries please contact:
Jenny O’Neill, Publishing & Communications Manager
jon@forma.org.uk

Press images

Captive Heart
Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban
8 February - 27 April 2025

Captive Heart is a new site-specific installation by London-based artist duo Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban. Continuing the artists’ exploration of diasporic identity, personal cultural heritage and popular culture, the exhibition marks the first in a series of public interventions at Forma’s brand new street-facing public art space on Bermondsey Square.

Drawing inspiration from Selena, the “Queen of Tejano Music”, the duo reflect on the enduring experiences of the Latinx community along Old Kent Road. Selena was a celebrated Mexican-American musician who bridged Latin music and mainstream American pop culture until her tragic murder at 23 in 1995, and has since become an icon within the queer community.

Developed at FormaHQ studios throughout January 2025, Captive Heart draws on Selena’s legacy to explore themes of love, loss, and cultural transformation, examining how identity, memory, and community persist amid urban change. Reflecting on Bermondsey’s evolving neighborhoods, the artwork invites viewers to consider the interplay between personal histories and collective cultural narratives in the face of urbanisation and erasure.

Nina and Athen say:

Captive Heart is a love letter to the lifespan of romance and the obsession, hunger, beauty and loss it entails. Reflected in the pockets of the ‘Old School’ patchworked by the gentrification of Bermondsey (and London at large), the work hones in on a romantic interpretation of grief. The things that could have been, the songs that were never sung, melodies lost between shop shutters and buses that never came.

Who better to hint at this than Selena, a familiar face to the locals who have built up the Old Kent Road as a hub of the Latin community, and to those more recent locals, franchising and buying the area, a face they struggle to place. Love songs written and translated, secrets shared and forgotten. The things we carry with us and the things that fade away.

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Curated in dialogue with FormaHQ’s residency and public programmes, the new space on Bermondsey Square offers a 24/7 platform for artists to present their work to the public through the 14-meter glass-fronted space.

Chris Rawcliffe, Artistic Director at Forma, says:

We are delighted to be collaborating with Athen and Nina as we launch our new space in Bermondsey. Through collaged nineties and noughties ephemera, pop culture references and personal artefact, the artists approach their work and exploration of identity with a refreshing playfulness and sensitivity.

Captive Heart opens on 8 February 2025. With more programming to be announced.



Artist Biographies

Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban (both b. 2000) are a British-Asian artist duo based in London. Their collaborative practice is founded upon an open & ongoing dialogue examining their shared experience of being raised in London by Indian mothers. Stories, food, clothes & objects passed from person to person, across houses, hands & borders, find a home in their work. The feminine diaspora & its link to world building is something the duo dissect, creating environments that reference the domestic & acknowledge but alter the gallery space & its atmosphere. A recurring question raised by their practice remains; what is sacred? Religious deities & pop icons of the modern world exist side by side, and the home-made & the glamorous encounter. Piracy, age, ownership, love & circumstance all take effect on the work’s materials resulting in an articulation of personal & marginalised histories.

athenandnina.tumblr.com | @athenkardashian @ninamhachdurban

Details
Captive Heart
Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban
8 February - 27 April 2025
24/7

Join us for the launch event
8 February, 4-6pm
rsvp@forma.org.uk

Forma
15 Bermondsey Square, London
SE1 3FD


For press enquiries please contact:
Jenny O’Neill, Publishing & Communications Manager
jon@forma.org.uk

Press images