In reality, these things need to be said.
Art can both heal and challenge in its statement of truth. In Reality, These Things Need To Be Said, brings together five voices searching themselves for answers while making statements about the things that matter.
Kim Thompson ‘Robin Hood Chase’ 2021
“The show is really about the individual experiences and perspectives of each of the artists - we realised during our conversation that they all have something important to share individually and we wanted to give them the space to breathe.”
Moving through Nottingham’s centre, you sense a city on the brink of change. With the physical landscape, a widely debated and New York Times’-featured topic, realities of past, present and future attempt to both coexist and overthrow each other. Could the cobbled paths beneath the newly demolished shopping centre be restored, should more building work and ‘development’ replace an old eyesore nobody asked for, will community requests for a green space be honoured? A story that plays out globally in the reshaping of cities everywhere, there’s a distinctive calm in the way it unfolds here, a chilled-out expectancy and careful examining of the questions raised when seeking alternatives to old ways that no longer work.
A timely location for the group show In Reality These Things Need To Be Said, Backlit Gallery in St Ann’s, east of the city centre in the town’s former market hub, hosts five selected emerging artists who have come together with the intentionality, purpose and diligence of a small village to create this illuminating show. Each artist presents a form of reconnection to self and the wider world by exploring the impact of pasts lost, stolen and re-written.
“The title came from a conversation Saziso and I had over coffee”, says Jazz Swali, the exhibition’s co- curator. “The show is really about the individual experiences and perspectives of each of the artists - we realised during our conversation that they all have something important to share individually and we wanted to give them the space to breathe.”
“We saw a need to face things head-on, to give voice to topics usually shied away from” adds Saziso Phiri, the other half of the curatorial team. “It’s been a while since anyone has been in the space for a live exhibition and we’ve all had so much time to reflect over the past year – the learnings from that time need a place to be shared. We wanted to fly the flag for the artists’ freedom of speech, and champion the many different ways of expressing deeper truths through art.”
Rene Matic is first up. As you enter the exhibition space a flag with the caption Racial Clash: Probe Goes On hangs overhead, alongside the lovers, a poem to set the tone for what comes next. The only artist not present at the launch, the poetry speaks for itself:
in reality,
these things need to be said:
said and understood.
or not understood but heard.
Rene Matic, the lovers, 2021
Flags: territory, country, protest. Ownership and rebellion.
The caption calls out a contradiction, ‘probing’ framed as a solution to racism is a violent act in itself. A piece that is both bold and subtle serves as a perfect gateway into the show.
Through the main space in one of the viewing rooms, Arit Emmanuela Ekundo‘s inner world is one of black swirling vortices, multiple reflected personas and liquid digital motion, all backed up by the guiding voice of the universe.
In this excerpt from a full-length film, As Long As There Is Bone, There Is Language transports the viewer into Arit’s mind at a time of liberation from the restrictions of old fears. “It’s a self-portrait documentary about the journey of figuring out who I am. I wanted to see my body in motion, see myself from a different perspective. This was the next best thing to sticking a mirror in the middle of the room and standing in front of it. I wanted to use my reflection to speak to people.” And Arit’s voice does speak to you as you watch, a multi-layered otherworldly poetic sound slicing through time and space while figures dance and move hauntingly bathed in shadow. There is something comforting and warm about the challenge of this imagery, and the artistic choices are polarising for some.
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo, As Long as There is Bone, There is Language, 2021
“My ancestry is nothing to be ashamed of, and a big part of my personal growth is abandoning the fear that separates me from the parts of myself I’ve been taught to hide.”
“The film follows the journey of the forming body becoming a person on the outside world, the magical nature of self-creation and becoming. I know I have this inside of me - this power, this magic, this strength that no one can take away, that I can’t even hide from myself. When I started making my work it was very experimental and artsy and weird – I had certain family members telling me it was evil, that it’s witchcraft. So I had to figure out for myself that there’s nothing wrong with these parts of my culture. This is in my blood. This work pushed me a little bit further to embrace it, to learn from it. I don’t have the luxury of caring what anybody thinks about me right now. I’m on my own journey of freedom and I can’t let anything get in my way. I want people to let go of fear. I want them to embrace even their scary, dark and misunderstood parts because people are really scared of the things they don’t understand, and then end up projecting that fear onto others. Someone who is afraid of themselves can feel a need to crush everyone who doesn’t hold that same fear. My ancestry is nothing to be ashamed of, and a big part of my personal growth is abandoning the fear that separates me from the parts of myself I’ve been taught to hide.”
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo, As Long as There is Bone, There is Language, 2021
“I know I have this inside of me - this power, this magic, this strength that no one can take away, that I can’t even hide from myself”
Zethu Maseko also explores the role of ancestral and mythological devices for connecting to the self.
In a light-filled room with echoing vocals and natural soundscapes, voice recordings layered with the atmosphere of the mountains, sea and earth of Southern Africa offer a stripped back base that gives space to the tapestries that form the rest of the work, dyed with handmade mixtures of ivy and mpepho ancestral herbs.
Zethu Maseko, ‘Water Words’ 2021
“Water has taught me a lot. To be humble, slow down, listen”
So, Why Water Words? “Thinking about and tapping into other realities that go beyond the human experience, the thing that runs through all of the works I’ve exhibited in this show is water; the observations that water has made and would make, the stories that water would tell us. Water has taught me a lot. To be humble, slow down, listen. There’s been a lot of research into water-holding information, how it responds to its environment.
The reason I depict the mountains and the earth is that I’m thinking about the cycle of water going up into the sky and coming back down to the earth. That cycle where water from India could end up being in a toilet in the UK, those same molecules that have travelled all over and may have been on this earth for years. Water holds so much wisdom and knowledge that we ingest into our bodies. It is here to guide us if we choose to let it.”
Zethu Maseko, ‘Water Words’ 2021
Zethu chooses sound to explore these ideas as a form of expression and healing. ‘Sometimes I feel changes in my body after singing. It’s like a portal that takes me into a bubble somewhere else. In indigenous Southern African spiritualism, they believe that musical instruments and sound can transport you to the ancestral realm. Also, being brought up in a situation where my voice wasn’t being heard in a linguistic way, I’ve harnessed the use of my voice to make people feel things without using words. The thought of me singing with lyrics, even if they are lyrics I’ve written myself from a genuine place? I can’t do it. It’s more about singing as its own communication tool and universal language.
If I’m singing to someone in Japan and it’s coming from a deep place inside of me, they will feel where I’m coming from.’ The tapestries were made predominantly in South Africa - some in quarantine after returning, while listening to and reflecting on the sounds collected there. ‘Weaving gives me the opportunity to embody the rhythm and repetition of a history of women doing this ritual. Tapestry is a way of archiving my experience and an alternative experience of the world. Tapestries often represent and mostly glorify the white European experience while erasing the experience of non-white people of colour. So I’m switching that up and being like ‘I’m telling our story and you have no choice but to look at this.’ Choice. The ability to decide the trajectory of our own lives. Clarity and truth support us in making choices.
But can a person fed a false narrative really be said to have chosen their outcomes?
In another viewing room, Greati-ish: The Gaslight of a Nation, by De’Anne Crooks is an openhearted examination of black British identity, filtering realities from the falsehoods used to lure Windrush generation immigrants here to restore post-war Britain.
De'Anne Crooks,, Greati-ish: The Gaslight of a Nation, 2020
“It was kind of made only to exist online, reflecting the way we were consuming content at the time – seeing everything through our phones, doom-scrolling and so on”
Narrated by De’Anne and dissecting this experience as though it were a toxic relationship, Greati-ish: The Gaslight of a Nation, highlights the brutalities facing immigrants attempting to integrate, and identifies the compensating strategies passed onto younger generations born here. For a piece made entirely in lockdown, mobile phone footage as the choice of the medium makes too much sense. “It was kind of made only to exist online, reflecting the way we were consuming content at the time – seeing everything through our phones, doom-scrolling and so on,” says De’Anne. “So this is the first time it’s actually existed in the real sphere. There’s someone in there watching it now and it’s so weird to see that! I never made it for others to watch– it was for my own release, which was quite cathartic for me.”
That catharsis is evident in the self-soothing and nurturing letter-style delivery that lays out discrimination and exclusion in the type of patient, gentle voice often reserved for children. ‘I was just writing a letter to begin with. Halfway through I realised it had that mothering tone. I’m an educator so part of me was like ‘wait, am I speaking to my students?’ But there’s a softness and an intimacy to it that sounds parental. It felt powerful so I decided to flow with it. Jazz asked if I wanted the chairs in the viewing room lower so that the audience can feel more childlike while watching, which was a beautiful idea.
De'Anne Crooks,, Greati-ish: The Gaslight of a Nation, 2020
“You see my grandma in the film speaking about this, how confusing it was to arrive in this place that had been glorified in the Jamaican education system – they literally thought the streets would be paved with gold when they got here – to find a cold, dirty, hostile environment where they were openly rejected and looked down upon.”
De'Anne Crooks,, Greati-ish: The Gaslight of a Nation, 2020
‘The piece addresses how we as black people have been gaslit to expect an experience here that depends upon our ability to earn this nation’s love through good behaviour – uncovering this as a lie can be very traumatic for anyone, regardless of their age. You see my grandma in the film speaking about this, how confusing it was to arrive in this place that had been glorified in the Jamaican education system – they literally thought the streets would be paved with gold when they got here – to find a cold, dirty, hostile environment where they were openly rejected and looked down upon.
That’s a real shock to the system. So for me, addressing those harsh truths with love and patience is an important act of care; the maternal feel this piece carries provides not just a series of tough observations, but guidance around how to deal with these observations.
“I think a big part of my practice now is heading into a place of love and intimacy – there’s a piece I made about two weeks after this was put out called Break Bread With Me that featured black women reading and chatting, just laughing and joking and having fun. I say that Greatish was the wound and Break Bread With Me was the ointment for it – I felt like I needed to make both.
We have the rage and the softness within us, and a lot of the time we feel we only require the rage because that’s what the environment brings out of us. We are love. And I think that bit has been taken away from the narrative. I’ve also learned that I can be vulnerable and strong at the same time. Self-acceptance is the key to that. We tend to hate and reject ourselves when we’re ‘weak’ or can’t perform to that 110% that we usually give as black people, and then we punish ourselves for falling short of mercilessly high expectations. I’ve learned that a vulnerable De’Anne is still a beautiful De’Anne. An open and crying and honest De’Anne is still a strong one, and is still valid.”
“We are love. And I think that bit has been taken away from the narrative. I’ve also learned that I can be vulnerable and strong at the same time. Self-acceptance is the key to that.”
This love energy abounds in the warm 1970s colour palette of Kim Thompson’s family portrait Series Robin Hood Chase. “There’s something really cosy and nostalgic about the colour palette of that time. The second piece you see when you walk in is of my grandma wearing a dress she made as an occasion dress – there are a lot of family pictures of her at parties or in the background at weddings wearing this patterned, bold mustard yellow and brown dress – at the time she would have been in her 40s but she still very much wore dresses that defined that era, with massive platform shoes. The colour palette of the pieces was mainly taken from that dress combined with colours that compliment it.”
“Robin Hood Chase, a street in St Ann’s, became a protective haven for the Caribbean immigrant families who lived there, and the Thompsons forged a home culture of style and creativity that spun out from the head matriarch’s influence”
Kim’s grandmother stands alongside 10 other family members on the walls of the main space, hung like the decorative scrolls bearing biblical text that existed in almost every Caribbean household of the time (the wooden bars that top and tail each portrait are a deliberate stylistic choice in homage to that omnipresent piece of kitsch black excellence) and an accidental warping of the canvas makes these pieces feel even more like the wallpaper of home. “We work to live and don’t live to work,” Kim’s mother reads to the audience from her You Got This notebook, home for her collection of newly-penned creative writing pieces, as well as the speech for tonight’s launch. ‘The secret to this life is finding what you love to do and making it work for good.’ And that’s definitely a principle her mother (Kim’s grandmother) the inspiration for these portraits, lived by.
Kim Thompson ‘Robin Hood Chase’ 2021
After being forced to leave her job at a local sewing factory when pregnant with twins, she returned to her entrepreneurial roots and began a sewing business, using the same savvy that started her sewing cooperative with 6 other women back when she lived in Clarendon, Jamaica. Robin Hood Chase, a street in St Ann’s, became a protective haven for the Caribbean immigrant families who lived there, and the Thompsons forged a home culture of style and creativity that spun out from the head matriarch’s influence.
“My family are all proficient amazing singers and musicians – we were all raised in the church so the music theme comes from there. And one of my cousins is the most amazing seamstress naturally – she pattern cuts from memory and can execute an idea perfectly just from hearing someone speak it. So she’s got the most direct bit of my grandma in her.”
Kim’s contribution to the show was completed in record timing. “As part of a 4- week residency that included a break for my birthday, I spent 9 days in total working on this. It was pretty intense. It all blurred into one! I had a lot of conversations with Jazz and Saziso beforehand. My thought process began with the overarching title of the show; then I went full circle and decided to really deliberately create something celebratory and joyous that was both about black history and trying to find a connection between the first generation and mine.
Me, Jazz and Saz all have migrant grandparents – there was always this sense of distance from them, being someone who was born here. Looking through family photo albums and listening to stories led me to find common bonds – even just through appreciating their aesthetic and musical tastes. Things I didn’t get to see of them in person are held in this really nice capsule reflecting what they were like when they first got here and makes me realise we’re not that different really. Pockets of their lives make me feel so excited and happy about discovering a direct line between them and me. So although it boiled down to 9 days, I knew what I wanted to create and it flowed out of me easily. As a commercial illustrator where my work is more finicky and about function, I haven’t had an opportunity to just paint in such a long time, capturing the essence of somebody in a really loose, quick, direct way. Backlit have been so supportive in making sure I have everything I need to do that. I think they saw something in what I was doing that needed this kind of scale and they were like “Come in and make big work, we’ve got the space.”
Kim Thompson ‘Robin Hood Chase’ 2021
Robin Hood Chase highlights the power of mutually protective bubbles – there are communities who have created their own harmony in spite of a failing system outside, making beautiful memories still felt generations later. “My mum says the community was so tight they almost shielded each other from noticing racism, because they existed together in a real solid and loving way – that mutual support is as much a part of our roots as the traumatic stuff. It’s nice to reflect on the fact that we haven’t solely had to deal with suffering and violence, and that there were families who thrived – they were joyous, they celebrated, they loved, they made amazing clothes and they dressed up – that to me is something to be remembered.”
With Backlit based in the same area as the Thompson’s family history, Matthew Chesney, Director of the gallery, shares his thoughts on how the local art scene connects with present-day St Ann’s. “The past year has been an amazing opportunity for the organisation to think about power, where the power is placed and the privilege within this organisation intrinsically,” says Matthew. “Some of that critique has formed part of this exhibition so that we can grow and understand. We have good representation, but it needs to be better.”
“We’re in St Ann’s in Nottingham – we are not reflective of this area or this city, and the arts scene really needs to reconcile the issues to access. There are gatekeepers who need to step aside and let other people be heard. So it’s about accountability for us – it’s about us listening and shutting up.”
Moving around the show is like a stream of consciousness to be carried on the journey back to London. As the unfinished cityscape fades out of view, it becomes clear that in reality, there is no one way to interpret, to process, to grow. To make sense of the seemingly inescapable confines of oppression. To heal and move beyond our investment in the fears being fed to us. In times when our reality is being splintered daily, in reality, bearing witness to these multiple perspectives united in their commitment to telling real stories is a powerful reminder that what is real can never be destroyed or lost, resurfaced, tarmacked over, designed into something better or hidden from those who value honesty. Constructs do not distract and conditioning cannot conceal. The carefully manicured grass is never greener. Our own realities are the best thing that we have.
In Reality, These Things Need to Be Said’, is curated by Saziso Phiri and Jazz Swali and is open from 6 - 29 August 2021 at BACKLIT in Nottingham.
More information about visiting the show can be found here.
