Yosola Olorunshola Extract from work in progress

Yosola Olorunshola

Extract from work in progress Still Life

Her days were numbered. For another week only, her job title would be Assistant Memory-Maker. Fara had complex feelings about this. It was hardly a transferable position – more appropriate for a magician or a fortune-teller with a side-hustle than a person hoping to pass her landlord’s credit check. This was not how she imagined the future, as her dreams evolved from hairdresser, to artist, to okay, I should at least consider medicine or law, until quite naturally, but to the confusion of her parents, she settled for art historian. Today was a distant dream from the picture of herself swanning through Europe on the sails of wide-legged trousers, gesturing towards framed lines and dots, finding a narrative in sweeping landscapes, or translating sculptures described vaguely as “wooden fetish figure” into something more culturally precise. Instead of leading tours beneath high ceilings and echoing galleries, her life was spent in a basement beneath a colony of dead flies pock-marking a flickering electric light. Really, her job was glorified data entry. She converted handwritten notes into digital files, so that one day, if someone were to look for letters sent by Sir Francis Drake to his lover (his Virgin Queen could never know about Miss Ink Feather), her hands would guide them to the source through lines of code and formula across space and time. Not exactly the kind of work you think would keep you up at night. Fara had lived and graduated through a Digital Revolution as well as a Great Recession, or so she reminded herself when the pressures of real life became too surreal to contemplate. One day,

people would capitalise those moments like she did in her mind and recognise that people like her were some of the last… last of what, she couldn’t say. At some point, as she prepared to enter the world of work, or the Future of Work, the museums and galleries she dreamed of inhabiting had decided to leap into the future and rebrand themselves in the language of start-ups, perhaps to woo some of the government’s investment back in their direction after five years of austerity. Archivists became Memory-Makers; Learning Teams became Discovery-Seekers; and Front-of-House roles became Experience-Creators. Leadership humbly resisted declaring themselves ‘Overlords’. While her entire degree had been spent burying herself in the art of the past, she was finally ready to sit up and face the future. Just not like this. The worst part was that all the new-fangled job titles could apply to any one of the roles, which meant everyone lived in a state of vague uncertainty about where exactly their jobs began and ended. Unfortunately for Fara, her job ended in a week’s time.

Nigerian daughters with degrees from Oxford do not get fired. Nigerian daughters with degrees from Oxford do not get fired. Nigerian daughters with degrees from Oxford do not get…

Fara’s pen tore through the napkin and scratched the already bruised table, probably salvaged from an old classroom. She could hear her mother’s voice through the lines, travelling through time: “Didn’t I tell you? You can’t eat art.” This was the dinnertime chorus to summon Fara from her sketchbook, fingers stained with pastels and charcoal as her mum sighed into another pot of golden red stew. After everything, twenty-seven years of playing by the rules, colouring between the lines and actually avoiding all the lines her friends had started snorting when they gained a modicum of disposable income, here she was. “I’ve been made redundant,” she mouthed to herself, trying to

make it sound easier to swallow than, “I’ve been fired.” She hadn’t even seen it coming. If a promotion wasn’t possible, she’d at least expected her role to be merged into a slightly more respectable position than Assistant Memory-Maker. “We’ve had to make some difficult decisions, Fara,” Melissa said, this time last week. “Funding’s been getting tighter and tighter each year, you know that. Every department has felt the pinch.” Fara crossed her arms loosely and resisted the urge to pinch herself. Perhaps they were just going to reduce her hours, or ask her to apply for another position. “Yes, I know everyone’s roles are going to change.” She was ready to reel off the transferable skills that were promised as the fruit of nights in the library and months spent hopping from internship to internship. “Well, yes.” Melissa cleared her throat and played with the pendant hanging beneath her neck. Her engagement ring gleamed in the light and Fara felt a rush of rage. Work in the arts, marry a management consultant – that seemed to be the only way to survive on your passions these days. “Senior Management have spent a long time working on this restructure. They are trying to rationalise the organisation and figure out which areas are really adding value – ” Melissa cut herself off. “God, I can’t believe what I sound like. “Creating value, I mean. This is just so hard.” “And how did Senior Management define ‘creating value’ then?” Fara said, as though it was her job to put Melissa out of her misery. “It came down to simple maths, I’m afraid. Who’s bringing in revenue? Can you believe it’s come to this?” Melissa shook her head and looked at Fara in the way strangers do when someone has caused a fuss in public, looking for a shared moment of contempt. “That’s the question they asked, and you know, I tried and tried to justify the need for my team but if you compare it to Exhibitions or Fundraising, we just can’t compete.” “Right.” “Look, Fara, there’s no easy way to say this but it’s been decided

that the Assistant Memory-Maker role is now redundant.” Fara opened her mouth to speak but felt herself both disappear and solidify in Melissa’s gaze. For a moment, it took her a while to grasp the situation. She glanced up at the dead colony of flies and imagined them bursting through the glass and swarming the room, a sign that it wasn’t just her life, but the whole world that might collapse at any moment. But they stayed there stagnant, silhouetted against the ceiling.

As she walked out of the swivel doors, Fara was almost swept up by a caterpillar of schoolchildren in high-vis jackets, holding hands like in those Madeleine cartoons she used to love. She let them pass in front of her as they mirrored her direction, walking into the gallery, their whole lives ahead of them, beginning with the simple pleasure of a packed lunch. See, they had things together, these kids – she had never managed to get into the habit of even making her own lunch. Just today, she’d wished she had somebody who would make one for her – her favourite: a sardine sandwich, Capri Sun, a pear that didn’t get squashed, and a single Twix to give her energy but keep the cavities at bay. Instead, her stomach tugged inside her like a bad memory, like a voice wriggling inside her, a gentle reminder: “you can’t eat art.”