Black Lives Matter and we should all care
We began the launch of Round Lemon and ZEST during the protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd, as well as countless other people of colour killed at the hands of police brutality. As a collective, our mission has always been to create a community which involves everyone, regardless of race, sexuality, gender, ability and religion. It is important for every artist to be seen and to have a platform to share their work.
The first place I heard about the death of George Floyd was twitter. Twitter can be an amazing place: you can see events before they hit the news, see first hand accounts of breaking stories and share your views with the world. As the protests unravelled, I was able to see real videos of how the police were treating the people involved, which is something news articles may not have shown. To see a nine year old get maced really puts a lot of things in perspective at nine in the morning as you eat your breakfast. To see a group of peaceful protesters get run over by a car hits differently when you are safe at home knowing that something like this would not happen to you because you are white.
There is a slight danger when issues like this are taken to social media as it starts to become a trend. You see yourself getting tagged in a thread of names who have to share a post and tag ten others as though this will be the thing that stops racism all together. Yes, it brings about a bit more awareness but ultimately you share the post and go about your day. Nothing comes of it because it does not impact you directly. You may see no harm in saying racial slurs in songs if you are not saying it in a malicious way. You may see no harm in wearing makeup five shades darker to make yourself look more tanned. But where do we draw the line? Looking more deeply in to Black Lives Matter poses lots of questions when surely it should be as simple as everyone is equal.
Some people wonder why they should care at all: ‘It doesn’t impact my life so why should I be signing petitions and donating my hard earned money’. Some people think it should be All Lives Matter: ‘Why is it just them? I am important too!’. Of course, everyone is important. Technically, we should all be equal in this day in age but for some reason we are not. Using All Lives Matter at this time does not really work. Imagine a street. In this street there are five houses. One of these houses has suddenly erupted with a roaring fire which will soon engulf it completely. Black Lives Matter means that in this moment, that house is the priority and the firefighters will spray that house with water. All Lives Matter means that all the houses at that moment are treated equally and are all sprayed with water when it isn’t necessary. Or imagine you are in a restaurant. One person falls over and breaks their arms while someone else goes in to cardiac arrest. Black Lives Matter means that the person who is going in to cardiac arrest is treated first and their chance of survival is increased. All Lives Matter mean that both people are treated equally in this circumstance and they are treated at the exact same time or the person with the broken arm is treated first. Clearly, the person going in to cardiac arrest needs more treatment quickly as their situation is life or death.
But, there is also good to social media and we cannot forget the fact that some people are trying their best to help where possible. With a platform, we can educate each other. People can ask questions and get quick answers to help them build their own views on a situation. We no longer have to share the same views as our families because we have a fountain of knowledge and a whole community of people.
So, what can we do to help? If you have the means to do so, you can donate money to a number of different organisations, such as Black Lives Matter, Show Racism the Red Card and the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. Please use these sites to learn more. If you do not have the funds to donate (and there is absolutely no pressure to do so - there are so many ways to support), then you can sign the petition. Once you’ve signed the petition, then it would be great to use any platform you have to share information you have learnt and get others to donate/sign the petitions. Finally, I have included below some amazing artists of colour who you should check out. Let us use this time to support one another.
Travis Alabanza
Alabanza is a wonderful performance artist and writer based in the UK who brings together their poetry, political views and style to create unique performances. They are a huge influential queer figure and one of their key works, BURGERZ, focuses on their experience on being a trans person and the slurs they have had thrown at them (as well as a burger). You can find their website here.
Keijaun Thomas
Thomas is an American performance artist who focuses on her Black identity and notions of the Black body in terms of labour and domestic service. I was lucky enough to help her set up one of her pieces at the Fierce Festival, called My Last American Dollar... . In this work, she investigates how people of colour hold space for one another and being Black alongside the histories of labour, subjugation and resistance. A video of the performance can be found here.
Lady Skollie
Lady Skollie is a South African artist who tells stories using watercolour, ink, crayons and woodcut. She uses her work to discuss a wide range of topics: sex, consent, human connection, violence and abuse to name a few. A recent exhibition which I visited, called WEAKEST LINK, explores the Dop system (paying coloured farm workers in alcohol) and Khoisan indigenous people of southern Africa. Her Instagram page can be found here.
Phoebe Boswell
Boswell is an artist who was born in Nairobi but now works in the UK. She combines draftswomanship and digital technology to create immersive installations to amplify voices and histories which have not yet been heard. One example of her body of work is For Every Real Word Spoken, which is a collection of almost live sized nudes. They are friends, fellow artists and curators who hold a QR code in their hands. When this code is scanned, a personal truth, observation, article or image chosen by the woman in the portrait. The subject of each portrait also chose the title. Boswell is showing that a body is never just a body but is read as a result of different characteristics (i.e. race and gender). You can find more of her work here.
Sola Olulode
Olulode is an artist based in London who uses materials from her Nigerian heritage to celebrate black identity, womanhood, femmes, and non-binary people. One of her most recent exhibitions, Where the Ocean Meets the Beach, was inspired by Travis Alabanza’s poem The Sea and focuses on the ‘honeymoon period’ and the intimacy with focus on Black queer womxn. More information on her can be found here.
I would love people to share their views in the comments below but please be respectful of others! If you see someone sharing incorrect information, please try your best to kindly educate them and point them in the right direction.
