The Gremlin who stumbled through life
How Careers Actually Happen
This morning I was in the studio, laptop open between paint tubes, answering emails that all seemed to belong to slightly different versions of my life. One about a potential show, one about logistics for something months away and one I still don’t quite know how to reply to.
None of it felt like a clean step forward. More like loose threads pulling in different directions.
It struck me, sitting there in yesterday’s clothes with half-dry brushes, that no one ever really explains how a career moves. We’re told the public version: make good work, work hard, be consistent, stay visible. The implied narrative is linear. Effort goes in, recognition comes out.
But lived experience feels nothing like that.
What I’m slowly realising is that careers don’t really “launch” at all. They accumulate quietly, usually through things that don’t look like progress at the time. For example, through a conversation that leads to another introduction months later, or stepping into a new environment (a city, a studio, a college) and finding it subtly shifts how people read you, even someone mentioning your name in a room you’re not in. Momentum comes from proximity and clarity, not just from how hard you’re working.
Early on, I thought the work itself would be the whole engine. ‘If it was strong enough, surely the rest would follow’, I thought. Instead, what I’ve learned (mostly by stumbling into it rather than understanding it) is that the work matters, but the system around the work matters just as much. Geography matters. Trust matters. Timing matters. Institutional permission matters.
Looking back, the turning points rarely felt like turning points. Instead, they felt small, uncertain, clumsy and embarrassing.
I remember being accepted into Sarabande Foundation and suddenly having a studio, mentors, and the space to properly learn how to talk about my work. One afternoon, while representing the studio during a residency pop-up at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, my mentor quietly pulled me aside. She walked me through the McQueen section, told me to look closely at the coats and dresses, to feel the materials, then asked me to check the labels. She said, simply, that ‘“the people shopping here spend serious money”, and I needed to “be able to imagine my work sitting alongside those price tags without surprise”. I needed to get familiar with that level, not treat it as distant or unreal. It was a small moment, but it permanently shifted how I saw value, audience, and where my work could belong.
And then there are other moments that shaped me just as strongly, in completely different ways. Years ago, before the opening night of a group show, a female critic pulled me aside and warned me not to trust the people involved, telling me I had only been chosen as an ethnic token. I walked into the evening already on the back foot. While others were celebrating, I felt cautious, shy, and suddenly unsure of my place in the room. Whether what she said was true or not almost didn’t matter; I carried the feeling with me, and it inevitably coloured how I showed up. Instead of moving through the space with ease, I felt small, doubtful and unsure of being there at all. That moment didn’t end anything, but it marked me. It became one of those quiet career experiences that never appears on a CV, yet still shapes how you understand the rooms you enter and the energy you bring into them.
None of these felt like cinematic “breaks”. They were simply human interactions: people trying to help, sometimes actually helping, sometimes unsettling you. All of it becomes part of the path.
I don’t write this from the position of having solved anything. If anything, the opposite. The more I see how careers actually move, the more I realise how opaque the process is. And, funnily enough, after years of freelancing, I’ve even started opening to the idea of (yes, God forbid) working with or for someone again. It may be part of the next chapter. Maybe it’s the old architecture training in me resurfacing, who knows. Either way, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. What I do have is an unshakeable faith that the dots connect in hindsight, and that whatever comes next will carry forward the lessons already earned.
In a strange way, that realisation is also reassuring. If careers aren’t purely meritocratic ladders, they’re also not mystical lightning strikes. They’re systems. Messy, human systems, but systems nonetheless. Which means they can be navigated, slowly and imperfectly, with patience and awareness rather than blind faith.
So this morning, in the studio, replying to emails and noticing how much faster things move than they once did - I’m aware I’m not the same person navigating them. The difference feels large in hindsight, but it hasn’t come from a single breakthrough. It’s come from the steady accumulation of small, daily nuances: conversations, doubts and lessons. Not a neat launch. Just the ongoing, non-linear process of finding where the next door might be, and learning, gradually, how these things actually happen.
From The Factory >
Ubba with Orange Skies - working title. I love the masjid in the background, the fire-yellow sky, and the way the colours sit and bleed into one another, almost like watercolour.
Prompts >
JOURNAL:
Where in your life is something already unfolding that you keep telling yourself hasn’t started yet? Write about the small signs that your path is already in motion.
ASK SOMEONE:
Ask someone a little further along in their career to tell you one small moment that changed their career trajectory.
CREATIVE ACT:
Write your ideal CV. Not the one you have, but the one you’re growing into.
Musings >
“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”
- Jessica Hische“Do the work. You will be rewarded. Not necessarily financially, but in ways that matter.”
- Trevor Noah“The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed.”
- Ocean Vuong“Your voice is the most powerful tool you have — use it.”
- Saul Williams
