I keep having to remind myself that 'I am only an artist' and my job is to do that and not think I can change the world. HOWEVER I am committed to my art making a difference. Thus placing myself in the space of so many wonderful academics and thinkers on Race and Whiteness.
I woke in the middle of the night with a title. White on White. I don't yet know how that will emerge in a work and am trying not to think about it. But it is the over arching idea that has come to me. Meaning that for white people to see their whiteness is like trying to find a polar bear in a snow storm. That is because we live in such a all consuming possessive culture in which we have made white the standard and not just the standard but the snowstorm that covers everything. Blackness is defined by the ways it is not white. I love coming into another discipline (ie to be amongst academics who spend their life researching and writing about race) as it challenges me with everything I don't know. And calls me to account to learn things that I suddenly realise I should know. For example, the idea of post racialism. This is the bizarre notion that we have achieved a state of surpassing racism, that we are 'beyond' it. This seems to me to be a white fantasy bought about by people who live in a bubble. But is IS a concept.
So much more to write about but it has inspired me to get back to my blog. So watch this space.
The following images are from last year when I came back from my residency. They are a part of a series of water colours which I am building into a large artist book which I call 'The Book of Tears'.
They somehow seem relevant to what I am discovering.
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