I’m attending a course on Black Visual Arts at the V&A.Click here to read more about it.
Now, I know that in European visual art and representation,Africa and African people are generally depicted as lower than Europeans, exotic, uncivilised and strange.
Knowing it and seeing it are two different things, however.
These are not our stories.This is how we are depicted in other people’s stories.
An African man in animal skins, wearing a turban on his head, grovels at the feet of Queen Victoria as she offers him a Bible.His role is clearly to be dominated and subjugated.
A young Black girl dressed in rich fabrics, her neck encircled with pearls, gazes up at the face of her white mistress, who looks out directly at the viewer.The child is an object, a plaything, a possession which denotes the power and wealth of her owner.
Other people’s stories.We exist in these works of art merely to provide information about the white people being depicted, and enhance their status.
This is the context in which visual artists such as Keith Piper and Sonia Boyce are working.We are fed these images, but we must tell our own stories, reclaim our visual landscape.
Before the beginning of the Transatlantic trade, African people were not depicted as lower than Europeans.African people and culture were considered to be exotic but were to be respected.The stereotypes of us as backward, ignorant and in need of civilising came later, as a justification for the enslavement of African people, and were in fact imported wholesale from Arab society.
Human beings were packed up in ships, as cargo, shipped to the Americas and sold.As Keith Piper as said, we had made the transition from humanity to commodity.
At the recent event at the MaritimeMuseum in Greenwich, Piper talked about the markup on enslaved African people.And in the choreopoem I am drafting, I talk about people being bought and sold like fax machines, cars and mobile phones, as if we were being traded on eBay.
Are we subject?Are we object?Signified or signifier?Artist or art object?Or all of the above?
Sonia Boyce's piece From Tarzan to Rambo, which is in the Tate Britain collection (but not on display), raises questions such as:
In popular, mass-produced depictions of Black people, where are we?
Where is our experience?
Where is our history?
And perhaps most importantly, how do we define our identity given the distorted reflections that are held up for our gaze?
The course, led by art historian Peter Ashan, continues for the next two Fridays, 13th and 20th October, free of charge. Click here for more info and to book.
Click here to read about Black British artists' responses to objects on display at the National Maritime Museum.
Click here for more BHM arts events including The Blood.
Access to Arts
I attended the Black Visual Arts course at the V&A today. We had a very stimulating discussion about whether people of African heritage value arts and artists from our community.
Last week, I interviewed Carol Tulloch, curator of the Black British Style exhibition which was held at the V&A last year. She told me she is still recovering from the wave of negative reaction she received from Black people in this country. When she went to New York, she said, it was completely different. People there really appreciated her work.
One thing that came up during today's discussion was that people of African heritage often feel uncomfortable in certain spaces, such as museums, so don't go. Like many others, my mother started taking me to museums when I was a young child, so I feel at home in them.
Our taxes pay for the maintenance of these institutions and their collections. More to the point, institutions such as the V&A and the Tate Gallery were founded from money that was made from the trade in African people. So we have every right to go there and feel at home there.
Parents need to take their children to museums and galleries at an early age.
One person on the course said she had taken her 16-year-old nephew to see the Black British Style exhibition.He had never had any interest in attending museums up until then, but because the exhibition was about fashions, he went along.Now that he has seen what a museum can offer, he is willing to go back.
We also talked about the fact that these institutions need to be made accountable to us.
A few weeks ago, I went to the Tate Gallery to view five paintings by Black British artists Frank Bowling and Sonia Boyce. Of these five, only one was on display. The other four were in storage.
I applied to view the works that are in storage and I was granted permission to view them. Unfortunately, only two of them are available to view and I have now been told I may only be able to view one. As institutions such as the Tate have - quite rightly - acquired these works, they need to make them available for us to view them.
There are still plenty of spaces left on the course, led by art historian Peter Ashan, which will continue for the next two Fridays, 13th and 20th October. Free of charge. Click here for more info and to book.
Click here for more Black History Month arts events including The Blood.
Click here to read about Black British artists' responses to objects on display at the National Maritime Museum.
