Chloe Abrahams

Chloe Abrahams is a Sri Lankan British artist and filmmaker. She has produced three short documentaries including Alice Aedy’s Somalinimo (2020, funded by Doc Society, acquired by The Guardian) and is producing another two, including Melanie Cura Daball’s Trust Me?! (funded by Doc Society). Chloe is directing and producing the feature documentary The Taste of Mango, a lyrical exploration of the impacts of trauma on motherhood in three generations of women in her family, which has generously been supported by Doc Society, SFFilm, Sheffield Doc/Fest MeetMarket among other organisations.

In 2020 Chloe received the John Brabourne Award and has three times been shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2018, 2019, 2022). She had her first solo exhibition at OVADA (2014), and has since been selected for exhibitions worldwide, including The London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery 2022 (currently exhibiting). Previously, Chloe worked as the Marketing Coordinator for documentary distributor Dogwoof, and is now completing a Master’s in Moving Image at the Royal College of Art.

I work with intimate material to explore memory, trauma and liminal psychological spaces.

I am curious about the ways that memories transform through transmission – how they mould and warp. I'm fearful of losing memories, fearful of misremembering, fearful of remembering something that might be better forgotten.

As a sleepwalker, I'm drawn to the surreal – often crossing boundaries between the everyday and the imagined.

Using methods drawn from both documentary and fiction practices I investigate the therapeutic potential of the confessional, culminating in visceral work spanning moving image, sound, writing and performance.

Still from The Taste of Mango

The featured image (at the top of the page) shows a rough cut feedback screening of my feature documentary, The Taste of Mango, at the Museum of Moving Image in New York. We are aiming to complete the film in the next few months.

The Taste of Mango collages intimate fragments from Chloe, her mother and grandmother’s lives. A lyrical exploration of trauma and its impact on motherhood, questioning how we can continue loving those who often give us pain in return.

Director: Chloe Abrahams

Producers: Chloe Abrahams, Elliott Whitton

Executive Producer: Diane Quon

Consulting Producer: Kellen Quinn

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Feature Documentary

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73 minutes

they have half of the brain awake, half of the brain asleep

this is in contrast to what happens in REM sleep

they usually have a specific genetic background

A dream-like investigation into my experience with sleepwalking

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Video

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8 minutes

Dreams personal sleepwalkers

The Taste of Mango (performance)

The Taste of Mango is a poem from the anthology Notes From a Young Girl, performed live. Here, I explore what I inherited from my mother – the good, the strange, and the traumatic.

This poem served as the inspiration for parts of the writing that I include in my feature documentary with the same title.

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Performance

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3 minutes

motherhood Performance personal Spoken Word

Chloe Abrahams

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About

Royal College of Art