Cylena Simonds is an artist based in the UK whose practice is rooted in folklore, threshold spaces, and the tension between fragility and resistance. She is interested in how unofficial narratives carry knowledge about refusal, exclusion, and protection. Employing a variety of traditional processes in dialogue with unconventional materials, her work registers the role of myth in her diasporic experience. Simonds’ work draws on the “Paper Bag Test” and related histories such as the “one-drop rule,” reflecting on colourism, passing, and racial classification across diaspora communities. Through symbolic materials, mirrors, and leaking pigment, she interrogates Black identity and its lived, unstable constructions.