Durre Shahwar’s “One of the Good Ones” Exhibition Rewrites the Archive at Ffotogallery

Some exhibitions ask you to look. Others ask you to sit, feel, and rethink what you thought you knew. Durre Shahwar: One of the Good Ones feels like the latter.

Opening with a public preview on Thursday 15 January (6–8pm) at Ffotogallery, this new exhibition sees artist, editor, and writer Durre Shahwar responding directly to the gallery’s archive, not to preserve it as-is, but to question it and gently challenge how stories are documented, valued, and remembered.

Running from 16 January to 14 February 2026, One of the Good Ones explores what happens to identity, memory, and meaning when a place becomes unstable and documentation carries weight far beyond paper. It’s an exhibition rooted in lived experience, especially the impact of seeking asylum and the quiet violence of erasure.

At the heart of the work is Durre’s relationship with material objects, the everyday, seemingly ordinary things that suddenly become heavy with meaning when faced with loss or displacement. In this space, documentation is no longer neutral. It becomes emotional.

Through layered text and imagery, Durre uses autofiction to trace the process of (re)constructing identity — pushing back against the idea that documents alone can define a life. There’s a constant movement between attachment and detachment, presence and absence, belonging and unbelonging.

The exhibition also re-maps Adamsdown, Cardiff, changing it into a psycho-geographical site where individual memory sits inside collective experience.

What makes One of the Good Ones especially compelling is its relationship with the archive itself. Instead of treating Ffotogallery’s archive as complete or authoritative, the exhibition addresses its silences, offering a personal counter-archive that questions who gets documented, how value is assigned, and whose stories are left behind.

Speaking on the process, Durre describes the project as deeply transformative:

“Working on the exhibition and with Ffotogallery’s archive has been a transformative journey for me… it has helped me find new forms of expression for difficult experiences that require nuance, care, and vulnerability.”

That care is evident throughout the work — not just in its subject matter, but in its approach. This is an exhibition that doesn’t rush. It allows space for complexity, contradiction, and quiet reflection.

Durre Shahwar’s practice has always lived at the intersection of identity, narrative, and representation. An award-winning writer, editor, and artist, her work spans autofiction, essay, and visual documentation, often shaped through collaboration and community. She holds a PhD in Autofiction and Pakistani-Welsh Identity from Cardiff University and has been recognised with awards including the Future Wales Fellowship and the Lapidus International Creative Bridges Award.

Her writing has appeared everywhere from Poetry Wales to the BBC, while her visual work has been shown across galleries and festivals in Cardiff, Bradford, Penarth, and beyond, as community sits at the centre of her practice.

One of the Good Ones continues that ethos. It’s less about presenting answers and more about opening conversations, about place, power, memory, and what it means to be seen.

The exhibition is open Wednesday to Saturday, 12–5pm, with free admission, at Ffotogallery, Fanny Street, Cardiff.

Read more about Durre Shawar’s Exhibition, One of the Good Ones

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Written by Angel Joanne Okonkwo