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. Damned Spot (2024) reflects on colourism, passing and racial classification. It draws on the “Paper Bag Test”, a 20th century discriminatory practice which used a brown paper bag to measure skin tone, and related histories such as the “one-drop rule,” a US legal framework that asserted anyone with even the slightest degree of African ancestry was considered Black. Through symbolic materials, mirrors and leaking pigment, she interrogates the complexities of Black identity, interrogating how skin colour shapes experience.