Call Me Back! Sheerness

Call Me Back! is a touring art installation that charts Damilola Odusote’s distinct upbringing growing up in the Thames Estuary. It supersizes the iconic 1990s phone booth which was a landmark meeting point in Tilbury, where he grew up.

Call Me Back! explores the issue of identity and uses Damilola’s personal history to highlight the complexity of political, cultural and identity dislocation. Damilola was born to Nigerian parents and fostered by a White couple in Tilbury, Essex. He delves into the underlying issues that formed his identity as a person of colour raised in a culturally and economically deprived port town in Essex by foster parents from a Romany heritage. Growing up in Tilbury, Damilola was exposed to the social stratification of inequality, poverty and racial conflict with first-hand experience of injustice, crime and unemployment. Despite the stability and emotional balance given to him by his foster parents, he had to rely on his creative wit and inner resilience to escape racism and discrimination in his environment. Damilola looks back on this tough upbringing and his rite of passage to the career he carved out against the background of adversity.

The booth with an oversized phone inside is a physical and metaphorical symbol of connecting to the past and emanates the sense of childlike innocence and nostalgia that everything appears larger than life from a child’s view. This technologically redundant communication device which was part of the fabric of society in the 1990s, poses a powerful reminder of a time when a collect call to your parents was the only lifeline available when you were lost. It invites viewers to reflect on the concept of reaching out to loved ones in moments of need with thought-provoking questions: “When you only have 10p in your pocket during a time of crisis, who would you call? More importantly, who would call you back?” The work encourages a deeper exploration of trust and vulnerability, shedding light on how these elements shape our connections at different stages of life, and how we evolve and learn through these experiences.

Damilola has engaged with children and young people along the Estuary through workshops to share his story and integrate their stories to form audio recordings for the phone booth. Oscillating between past and present, Damilola has provoked participants to look back into their own pasts posing the question “What would you say to your younger self and how would your younger self respond?” 
He hopes that by encapsulating his past experiences with the current young people’s experiences from his former schools in an iconic communication relic of the past, the phone booth will be a symbol of inspiration and hope for the future. As much as this project is a journey for Damilola, he wants participants to go on their own journey to unlock their hidden memories.

Call Me Back! Can be seen in the following locations:

Image:  Damiloa Odusote at Brixton House. Photo by Gbolahan Obisesan