You can see in grainy, shaky images of a number of police officers in their blue uniforms, marching, and the stick pull. You see, a group of four officers, pulling a Black carry away, to him. And you can see the protesters, the aufklauben stones and in the direction of the police spin, you will see the proud men who play their Reggae-plates, the meters high, the sound system on the road. They originate from the seventies and eighties, these recordings, which let you immediately to the protests, which are just flame to all corners of the world, think. Were shot the recordings at the London Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of living in the black Community. Assembled into a video installation together with the images of the British artist Isaac Julien has. In the context of a retrospective of the Caribbean artist Frank Walter, the Installation is currently, and until 15. To see November in the Frankfurt Museum for Modern art (MMK).
Alexander jürg’s
editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
F. A. Z.
never before has there been such a world-wide Protest against the exclusion of Black like after the brutal murder of the African-American George Floyd. “I can’t breathe”, “I can’t breathe”, had called the man again and again, but the policeman who had arrested him, did not cease to press his knee on Floyd’s neck until it died. The anger and the outrage about it are great, and millions of people demonstrate against police violence and racism, the topic is omnipresent and not a new one. Not even in the art: the racist mind plays patterns, but also the employment with the movements, the brace, however, long been an important role.
Hardly hidden, activist character
What causes racism, slavery and colonialism continue to work, which is described in the MMK exhibition in a number of recent works of art. Actually, the Work is to establish a connection between the previously little-known, sprawling plant in 2009, the late artist Frank Walter, and the present, now you look like a comment to the protests of “Black Lives Matter” movement. This also has to do with your barely hidden, activist character. The exhibited artists want to interfere, it is obvious.
From the British artist, author and film Director John Akomfrah, one of the founders of the left with the Black Audio Film Collective, will be shown in a video installation on three adjacent placed canvases from the life of the black Intellectual, Stuart Hall, one of the pioneers of Cultural Studies, told. Hall, who grew up in Jamaica before he came as a Student to the UK, was one of the First who has pointed out that power can develop the culture, when it comes to changing companies. Akomfrah in his tribute to Hall Jazz shows clips of television appearances, Halls and mixed the images of demonstrations with dreary urban landscapes in decay.
to dance
prompted a Lot of anise saves cher, but no less insistently, the video work “Free, White and 21” of the American artist Howardena Pindell, born in 1980, is. In it, she reported, the face of starr directed in the camera of racist hostility, humiliation and in Kindergarten and school, of how it is, as the only Black at a wedding is not asked to dance or to become due to the skin color is not invited to a job interview. White makeup, with a phosphorus blond wig on his head, plays with Pindell your not black Against the same: you should not be so ungrateful, not so whining, tells you in this role. Thus, it embodies an attitude, about the many Black suits again now: that people who do not share the skin color, my, your Worries would be to exaggerate. So bad it will not be with the racism, Yes, probably not: Such teachings do not want to listen.
On the other side of the river main, in the Museum of Applied art, is currently running and still to 1. November, the exhibition “Life doesn’t frighten me”. It is the fashion of the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, the revolutionized with her Label Comme des Garçons, the fashion world. However, because of the colorful, sloping, voluminous dresses, which are exhibited in the Show come from the collection of the black, Cologne based fashion blogger Michelle Elie, has also be the exhibition statement about how Black people in the present – or overlooked – seen. It starts with the mannequins, where the pieces from Elie’s collection of slopes, which are all black. Elie and the curator Mahret Ifeoma Kupka have made a conscious decision to want to show that black people operating both in the cultural as well as in the world of fashion is still under-represented.
