As stated by Jennifer Higgie in her article Right Here, Right Now. What is art’s responsibility in the time in which we live (published in Frieze Magazine No. 196, June-July 2018) “a groundswell of countless activist groups across the world are grappling with everything from racial, sexual and gender politics, to gun control and the environment, to animal and human rights and more.”
But how firm is the grip that these groups have on the public? To understand the process of how our mind assimilates and de-codes new issues and topics and subsequently allows us to formulate an opinion, I am going to describe how I began to acknowledge black culture voice by visiting shows in NY, Berlin, and London between the end of 2017 and now.
In October 2017, I watched for the first time a work by the LA-based artist Arthur Jafa. The video was the monumental Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2016), a collage of found footage and iconic events of black culture in America put together in a dance of images accompanied by Ultralight Bean by Kanye West. The screening was set up inside a darkish camping tent on the rooftop at 180 the Strand offering to the public a 360-degree experience. In America, this film was already popular thanks to its premiere at Gavin Brown Enterprise in Harlem, NYC, which duly opened just after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016.
When I watched Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death, I just thought that it was a very cool video about black culture but, after that experience, its remembrance was buried in my consciousness. This stayed secluded in a dark corner of my memory until last March, when I watched another of Jafa’s films, Apex. This one was screened at his touring solo-show, A Series of Utterly Improbable, yet Extraordinary Renditions (firstly opened at Serpentine Galleries which I missed!), at Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin (open until 25th November 2018). Apex is again a collection of found images – typical of Jafa’s style – which tells the story, events, joy, and redemption, of black Americans.
https://youtu.be/QI-CPs4laIY
Since this second experience, something clicked in my mind, and I started (maybe very late) to spot and acknowledge that there is a consistent calendar of shows and events popping up worldwide to reach the attention of the broader white public and speak out with black stories, culture, and politics.
Then once I was back in London, between July and August 2018 came the turn of the young British black artist Gaika at Somerset House Studios who presented System, a new sound and video installation. This new production comes from the artist residency that Gaika did at SH studios and investigates the history of Sound System culture, its origins from Jamaica, and Notting Hill Carnival in a dancing footage spread in multiple screens hanging in a jungle-like urban wreckage installation.
Concurrent to Gaika’s installation, was Evan Ifekoya: Ritual without belief at Gasworks (5 July-2 September 2018), a six-hour sound work and installation which the artist describes as “a black queer algorithm across generations, locations and political affiliations.” The new piece was designed and built together with a group of London-based peers (black, homosexual, female/ non-binary folk) during a series of workshops leading up to the exhibition. Upon entrance, an ocean covers the floor and the visitor could be seated on acoustic panels piled in the middle of the main room and listen to a series of vocal samples spanning theory, conversations, and intimate thoughts. Crucial to the show is an installation of black, white, and orange helium balloons that references The Loft, a club that revolutionised the gay-disco scene in downtown Manhattan during the 1970s.
For how it regards the London art scene, Gaika’s historical installation and the new commission by Evan Ifekoya, which gave voice to the underrepresented group of black GLBT people, preluded the Black History Month – October – which continued the wave of events investigating, presenting, and representing black art, culture, traditions, and also racial and political issues.
Included in the BHM calendar was “African Soldier” by John Akomfrah at IWM London, a new multimedia installation to remember the millions of Africans who fought as soldiers or served as porters during the First World War. Also included in the October calendar, “Autonomous Morris” by British-Caribbean artist Zak Ove’ was presented to the public at Smithson Plaza, (on display until February 2019). The new sculpture is a futuristic yet retro, cross-cultural totemic mask (the largest by the artist to date) of a motorised ‘Macco,’ a person who involves themselves in other people’s business for gossip and posterity.
Now that November has arrived, at 180 the Strand (London), as part of the group exhibition Strange Days (until 9th December), we can enjoy the watching of Kahlil Joseph Fly Paper (2017). The piece is a black & white video which brings us in Harlem to tell the story of African Americans, Jazz, and family memories through photographic references of the work of Roy DeCarava (1919-2009), a photographer known for his shots of jazz musicians and life in Harlem who Joseph admires.
In the guise of a guinea pig, it took me more than a year of show visits to acknowledge and appreciate the constant flux of events focusing on black culture popping up not only in London but also all around the world. For sure, these experiences are making me more responsive and sensitive to specific topics and aspects of black culture. However, it seems to me that my attention derives from the repetition of the experience which subsequently led me to crave further research. Therefore, if repetition is an effective way to get people to acknowledge facts, culture, and history of a specific demographic of society, we must agree that it requires time and fluidity in the space. Given this starting point, it is clear that perseverance and a worldwide voice are critical features for reaching attention amongst people and, hopefully, obtaining results towards a world change.