‘I Too, am a Survivor’ is a powerful, 360-degree immersive installation, inviting audiences into a twelve-sided room to experience the imagined journeys and inner lives of Chinese ceramics and other cultural artifacts.

Set within the World Cultures Gallery at the World Museum, Liverpool, this unique audio-visual installation reframes traditional museum storytelling by giving voice to the objects themselves. Through T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Sarah Howe's evocative words and a surrounding cinematic environment, ‘I Too, am a Survivor’ offers an intimate glimpse into the themes of journeying, belonging, dislocation, and resilience.

Stepping into the twelve-sided room, viewers are surrounded by large-scale projections and an enveloping soundscape that animates the perspectives of seven treasured artifacts from the museum’s World Cultures collection. This new approach invites audiences to reflect on the stories embedded within each object — journeys across continents, experiences of displacement, and the resilience required to endure through time. In this reframing, these artifacts shift from static displays to vibrant witnesses of global histories, inviting viewers to consider the connections between these objects' narratives and their own lives.

The World Cultures Gallery itself is a rich tableau, housing over 1,600 artifacts from Africa, The Americas, Asia, and Oceania. This gallery showcases the complex exchanges of ideas and material culture between Europe and the world. However, ‘I Too, am a Survivor’ is not merely a presentation of heritage; it is the first in a series of innovative "interventions" within the gallery. Through collaborations with artists like Howe, the museum reimagines these artifacts’ histories, confronting the layered and often painful histories behind many objects in its collections.

As a part of this evolving series, ‘I Too, am a Survivor’ marks World Museum’s commitment to open dialogue about the provenance of its global collections, especially within the context of Liverpool’s unique history. The installation challenges traditional museum displays and interpretations, encouraging a re-evaluation of whose voices are heard, how stories are told, and who tells them.

Now on permanent display at the World Museum in Liverpool, 'I Too, am a Survivor' stands as a poignant reimagining of museum storytelling, using immersive technology and poetic storytelling to honour the resilience and journeys of cultural artifacts, ultimately inviting viewers to see themselves in these storied objects.