Black Pain Is Not for Profit: Rene Matić with art by BBZ London and Michael Bilsborough, Black Futures

I was on my way to university when a tweet came to my attention that revealed Luke Willis Thompson had been nominated for the Turner Prize.

The pride that had been swimming in my stomach from the moment Lubaina Himid took home the prize in December last year quickly sank. Himid, whose work so eloquently interrogates colonialism, racism, and institutional invisibility, was not only the oldest person but also the first Black woman to ever win the Turner Prize since it was founded in 1984 (wild).

As a womxn of color studying art, seeing Himid take the prize made me clench my fist and hold it firmly above my head—one small step for society, one giant leap for the art world, or so I had hoped. After receiving the news on Thompson being short-listed, I clench my fists again, but this time not with pride. This is a blow. It didn’t take long for the art world to get back on its bullshit.

I first became familiar with Thompson’s work when he gave a lecture during my first week studying fine art at Central Saint Martins, where all my fears and doubts about the art industry were confirmed. His body of work was a list of instances of racist violence and Black trauma, which he had polished and carefully composed to be consumed by the predominantly White, middle-class gaze of the art world. Thompson has not just made one or two pieces about racial violence—almost all of his art centers on it. It is his obsession. While Thompson does not identify as White due to his mixed European and Fijian heritage, he is White-passing, meaning that he benefits from White privilege within our White supremacist society. In short, Thompson is a White-passing male, making work and profiting off the violence and suffering of Black and marginalized people.

When asked during the lecture why he didn’t put descriptions next to his work, he argued that it isn’t his job to educate people. I wondered then, If it is not your job to educate people, then whose job is it? And if you wish to take these painful and deeply distressing events as your subject matter, but are not doing so in order to educate, what exactly is the intention of this work? He made no reference to supporting the communities which he was studying, and did not seem concerned whether his art or his practice was of benefit to those whose experience it leeches upon. For me, Thompson’s work does not feel like a sensitive awareness-raising project, but a process of extraction, sensationalism, and commodification.

The piece of art he’s been short-listed for is a 2017 work, Autoportrait, which profiles Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who was shot by police during a routine traffic stop in Minnesota in 2016. When speaking about Diamond, Thompson very proudly boasted that he was the only artist that she had allowed to film her.

It is a “predatory,” calculated, and “voyeuristic” gaze through which he captures these people and their stories, and shares them with us—a gaze that people of color know all too well.

Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket (a White artist’s abstract interpretation of Emmett Till’s dead body), which was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, springs to mind. The inclusion of this work prompted the infamous open letter penned by Hannah Black, who called for the removal of the work, stating that “those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material.” The piece also inspired a performance artist named Parker Bright to protest the work’s inclusion by standing in front of it wearing a T-shirt that read: BLACK DEATH SPECTACLE.

Hannah Black’s letter1 prompted many critics to come running with cries for artists’ right to freedom of speech and creativity, an argument which no doubt many will use to let Thompson off the hook. However, with our sordid history of White violence against Black bodies being celebrated as sport and entertainment—should it really be non-Black artists telling these stories? And are we really still prioritizing the “creative freedom” of White artists over the sensitive and painful histories and realities of people of color?

Skip Notes

1. Greenberger, Alex. “ ‘The Painting Must Go’: Hannah Black Pens Open Letter to the Whitney About Controversial Biennial Work,” ArtNews, March 21, 2017. www.artnews.com/art-news/news/the-painting-must-go-hannah-black-pens-open-letter-to-the-whitney-about-controversial-biennial-work-7992/.