Residencies
Weh Deh Here
Maybelle Peters began a residency with Alchemy Film & Arts in September 2024.
We Deh Here explores family connections, historical ties and traces of colonial encounters. Manifesting as a film and exhibition, the work had its first public iteration at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2025. It was presented as part of Forum Expanded at the 2026 Berlinale and will screen at the sixth edition of Prismatic Ground.
Drawing and expanding on the artist’s focus on movement through observation, labour and animation, the project seeks to connect personal narratives to wider historical events, researching materials held in official archives together with family histories along matrilineal lines, sewing, and associations with Guyana and Scotland.
Maybelle’s residency is part of The Teviot, the Flag and the Rich, Rich Soil, Alchemy’s programme of artist residencies supporting the generation of new knowledge through long-term, practice-led research and multidisciplinary partnerships.
Sitdown
Maybelle spoke to Alchemy Trustee Rhea Storr to discuss the themes and processes of We Deh Here ahead of its exhibition at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2025.
A new essay by David Alston was commissioned to accompany We Deh Here, to mark the film’s premiere at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2025.
Maybelle Peters
Maybelle Peters is a London based artist and filmmaker working in film and CGI. Her practice focuses on storytelling using documentary, historical events, literature and oral narratives. She gained her bachelor’s degree in Animation at Farnham where she made her first commissioned film for BBC2. Her Channel 4 commissioned film, Mama Lou, has been shown extensively at animation festivals including Annecy, Ottawa and the Edinburgh Film Festival as well as broadcast television. She is the recipient of the inaugural Womxn of Colour art award. Her work was shown as part of ‘The Place is Here’ exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary and South London Gallery in 2017. Maybelle’s practice explores allegorical tales and myth making gleans stories from objects, personal rituals and an archive of ephemera, gestures and sounds.
Photo: Sanne Gault