WHAT'S THE PURPOSE?
Statistics, testimony and the lived experience of many people in black communities, in both England and other countries with a significant African diaspora, would suggest that cultural institutions are not always the most welcoming space. Often marginalised people feel alienated from these spaces as they are seemingly geared towards white, middle-class communities. This alienation of black-folk is particularly pertinent when large cultural institutions attempt to deliver exhibitions or other cultural events around blackness - are these events for the people of colour they are about, or for a white audience an institution is trying to access?
This website surmises and presents information discovered as part of my dissertation and final Masters project. It aims to provide a guide on the ethical curation of blackness in large English public arts institutions in a post George Floyd world since 2020. I have created a framework by which curators can ethically curate, discuss and present blackness through arts exhibitions. This framework was made as the result of an autoethnographic study comprising of interviews, exhibition case studies and academic research.
This website also hosts a platform on which to discuss and present discussions on the intersection between race and art through blog posts, interviews, reviews etc. This is to combat anti-black racism within the arts and in general.
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My thesis is founded on my lived experience of attending exhibitions on the theme of Blackness in Britain as a mixed-Black woman, finding that often the Black experience is homogenised and can fail to portray what it means to be a Black person in Britain today, as well as portraying Black history as a monolith of slavery, colonialism and oppression. Often exhibitions about race fail to access the communities of which they discuss and are highly performative as they fetishise Blackness through poor curatorial methods.
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I am London-born and raised with Jamaican and English heritage. I have an MA in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and this project completes my MA in Arts and Cultural Enterprise from Central St Martins, University of the Arts London.