Black lives still matter

By Stratoula Nasioula

It has been just more than one year since the Black Lives Matter really took off, in response to the tragic death of George Floyd by a police officer due to his race. Graphic images flooded social media and people around the world responded to events against racist behaviour.

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Living in an era filled with such intense – and highly publicised – episodes, the art world could not stay impartial. After all, art is an expression and a way to document and respond to what is happening to current times.

But are gallery exhibitions that are showing right now a direct response to last year’s events, or do they have something more to communicate?

Opening up the capital

When London finally left lockdown, galleries all over the capital officially opened as well.

An Infinity of Traces exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, which mainly shows work in London, New York and Shanghai, curated by Ekow Eshun, features art photography pieces and installations that are breathtaking.

Eshun, a writer and broadcaster who directed the whole project, invited emerging Black artists to feature their work in the gallery. The exhibition reflects not only the Black Lives Matter protests but the whole identity of different races.

From a small stroll at the exhibition, one can notice all sorts of artwork about race, ethnicity differences and societal power from Black artists.

The exhibition, said the Gallery’s website, comes out of the BLM movement. But “it is also predicated upon the existence of a much longer, more sustained antipathy to the Black presence that, in Britain, has deep, embedded roots in the nation’s imperial past”, it says. 

A unique opportunity

Eshun is the former director of ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) London and the author of two books, Africa State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent and Black Gold of the Sun. He wanted to familiarize the Black presence against the backdrop of a strict and hesitant British culture. The artists that are hosting their pieces are based in UK and due to this gallery is a unique opportunity for them to express their art.

The gallery combines features photography, video and sound installations, paintings and a various of quotes that mainly communicate kinship, self-care, feminism, manifestation, and feminism. “The exhibition is a window to black culture,” said Nico Brocchin, a member of Lisson Gallery. “It is a natural and organic reaction from the artists to what happened last year, but it is not necessarily connected.”

This exhibition was set to be exhibited in December but was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. As a result, it evolved from being a response to the Black Lives Matter movement to a celebration of Black Art, a way for people to remember what happened to George Floyd – and Breonna Taylor – and how those events shook the world.

The visuals are strong and vivid, providing a large panorama of what British Black art means. The messages are strong and reflect the artists’ experiences, taking a casual observer from quotes, paintings, and photographs to a visual, interactive sound experience, filled with stories, poems, music, and culture.

Societies in transition

The Lisson is not the only gallery to celebrate Black lives. At the Serpentine Gallery, James Barnor, a photojournalist with roots in both the UK and Ghana, is exhibiting a collection of his capture images of societies in transition and transformation, throughout the years from 1950 to 1980.

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Coming from a family of photographers, Barnor lived his lives back and forth between the two countries, capturing images along the way. Throughout the years he did assignments for Daily Graphic, and he also worked with the influential African magazine Drum.

His work that is exhibited right now is the largest survey of his career up to this date. Barnor witnessed many political and social changes, and his photography is a documentation of African and Afro-diasporic everyday lives of people whom he came across.

The photo gallery is filled with moments from families, portraits, parties, magazines and. The photographs feel so alive, and they are so well curated that they really achieve Barnor’s goal: to communicate his visual to the receiver.

Constantinou, a gallery curator and art critic, does not believe that Barnor’s recent work is simply a response to last year’s events. Even though there is no doubt that art is a constant mirror of societies, she said that the artist was working on his pieces since almost the beginning of his life. “We can maybe say that he is one of the first admirers of Black culture,” she said.

The significance of Barnor’s work is that even though he has been creating art for many years, the events of last year made his work recognizable. “People are really interested in Black culture since last year, they wanted to know more and help in way that they could,” said Contantinou.

Exhibitions like this would perhaps not be as appreciated as much in the past as they are now. “Barnor’s right now is in the spotlight,” Contantinou said. “The Serpentine Gallery has hosted Barnor’s work for people to see now with fresh eyes.”

Re-empowering BLM

Due to Covid-19 many art institutions are hosting galleries online. The Gallery Cosmos is hosting a virtual exhibition called The Black Story, about re-empowering the Black Lives Matter movement. The creators want not only to ensure that people won’t forget about the events that happened, but they also want to spread important messages about Black and Asian culture.

Throughout the exhibition, many interviews and webinars will be hosted in order to create a conversation over race and how society views minorities, to create a meaningful dialogue for anyone to follow.

“The body of work presented is a collective commentary on the experience of the system oppression, racism and discrimination faced by the black community,” said Nahar Khan, executive Director and Curator of the gallery.

It is also important to mention that the exhibition is built like a rotunda in a circular form which symbolizes equality, universality and solidarity – some of the topics explored in the exhibition.