Tina Pasotra's Testimonial

Receiving this fellowship was an affirmation of the work, and of the routes and timelines that don’t always get recognised.

I’ve always worked part-time alongside my practice, hustling for freelance jobs and building a body of work on my own timeline. Having my short film, I Choose, released during the pandemic, unable to harness any momentum from it, was a real disappointment. So to have that particular work alongside my wider creative practice understood in its nuance and intention, was genuinely motivating.

I’m based in Cardiff, where I grew up, and in Wales, the limits of access and opportunity are something you know firsthand. My work hasn’t come through art or film school or private education, and those routes still quietly determine the perceived validity of a practice and where someone is positioned within the creative industries. To disregard other routes and timelines is to uphold a particular status quo.

So much of my work is shaped by the personal, and by the ongoing negotiation of what one does or doesn’t wish to share. That tension becomes particularly complex when navigating a landscape where public funds are often gatekept, and artists are asked to declare their relationship to ‘barriers’ as a condition of funding, despite institutional claims of understanding intersectionality and systemic inequity.

The demand for disclosure only ever seems to run one way. I’ve often wondered why those same institutions aren’t asking other artists about their proximity to generational wealth, or whether a partner’s income is subsidising their practice. These are only a couple of examples, but they speak to a wider imbalance. So to receive recognition that didn’t come with those conditions attached, as a 2025 Arts Foundation Fellow, was sincerely encouraging and uplifting.