New Leicester exhibition highlights housing injustice in London borough

A new exhibition about the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has launched at University of Leicester today (Tuesday, 2 May).

The Real Faces of the Royal Borough brings together digital portraiture by professional Canadian artist Nevada Lynn and research by University of Leicester’s Dr Sharda Rozena.

Dr Rozena, a lifelong resident of the Royal Borough of Kensington, has used research on housing, displacement and gentrification to inform the exhibition.

The exhibition highlights twelve people who experience or have experienced displacement, gentrification and other housing injustices in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The borough has come to be associated with the mega-rich but also with the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017.

The exhibition is being shown within David Wilson Library, University of Leicester until Friday 15 September.

Dr Sharda Rozena said: “I found that behind the facade of Kensington’s opulence and its large, gated complexes, luxury homes, palaces, royal parks and embassies, are many residents who are often ignored or overlooked.

“They have experienced and continue to experience loss of community, the sanitisation of public space (that is, removing the signs of a lived environment), the displacement of their friends and neighbours, and ongoing threats and harassment from private, state and corporate landlords.

“Instead, the borough is increasingly reserved for the transient elite and the wealthy few. Nonetheless, we are still here.”

Dr Rozena, who completed her PhD at University of Leicester continued: “I decided to complete my PhD at the University of Leicester because of the exciting and innovative research happening in the geography department.

“The University also supported many academic opportunities, including my overseas trip to Vancouver, Canada which is where I met Nevada and began this collaboration of art and academia.

“We intend for the exhibition to get even more coverage as it tours the UK and for this to increase awareness of the need for change in the housing sector.”

More information about The Real Faces of the Royal Borough can be found here: https://www.facesoftheroyalborough.com/

Dr Sharda Rozena’s PhD was funded by the Midlands Graduate School Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training Programme, following which she undertook a Post-Doctoral Innovation Fellowship funded through the University of Leicester’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Award.