Celebrate Black Identities
When we pick up that paper to read the news, we are faced with ourselves, reinterpreted, and it’s so subtle, and so clever, and sometimes so funny, that it enters one’s psyche. And it happens every day. The whole point of the work is so that when a black person is in that space, we see ourselves – we see the ordinary, everyday things that we are concerned by. It’s those conversations with my fellow diasporans that are important to me – we have built this place, this country, and yet we are not visible. They are who the work is for. And for myself, of course, so that I can go into museums, and see myself.
Lubaina Himid CBE RA
The Carrot Piece
(1985)
Tate
© Lubaina Himid, courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London
I met up with my careers master and they said to me, so Morris what do you want to do and I said I want to be photographer. He said don’t be stupid boy, there’s no such thing as a black photographer.
There were a very limited range of images of African diasporic women ... For me this was in stark contrast to the glut of images around white femininity.
Sonia Boyce OBE
Missionary Position II
(1985)
Tate
