Hannah Black’s “Politics” (2022) and “Broken Windows” (2022)
Hannah Black, Politics (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.
« A clean riot is not one in which little rioters long-stomped, long-straddled, BEANLESS but knowing no Why
go steal in hell
a radio, sit to hear James Brown
and Mingus, Young-Holt, Coleman, John,
on V.O.N.
and sun themselves in Sin.
However, what
is going on
is going on. »
Written by the American poet Gwendolyn Brooks in 1968 after the Chicago riots that followed the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, these words have found a contemporary context as cited by New York activists Aaina Lakha and Kay Gabriel within Politics (2022), a video work created by British artist Hannah Black. Currently showcased in the first room of the Fitzpatrick gallery [Paris], this video features a dialogue between two women smoking cigarettes while discussing the use of symbolic force in the context of rioting and looting.
Based in Marseille [France], Hannah Black’s creative approach harmoniously integrates thought and emotion, through written texts, prints, videos, sculptural installations, or performances. She is most notably recognized for co-authoring alongside writer Ciarán Finlayson and critic Tobi Haslett, The Tear Gas Biennial an impactful open letter in which they critiqued, the co-chair of the Whitney Museum's board Warren Kanders, for his controversial philanthropic initiatives funded by the sale of tear gas and various weaponry through the American equipment company Safariland. Black’s work has been presented as solo exhibitions at The Art Gallery of York University in Toronto, the Luma Westbau in Züric, the Performance Space and Bodega of New York, among many others.
Hannah Black, Politics (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.
Politically engaged, Hannah Black’s pieces showcased in the current Fitzpatrick gallery exhibition holds a poignant connection to the protest movements that happened in France following the tragic racially motivated murder of a young teenager by a white police officer in June 2023. « It’s as if the riots had triggered something we’d lost, to salvage a bond that was on the order of the brutal, the passionate. As if it were suddenly possible to be in the street, in the squares, on the bus shelters for a valid, honorable reason. That it was the only way to express grief, and to express it together, » explains Hugo Bausch Belbachir, the curator of the exhibition.
Hannah Black, Broken Windows (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.
On the upper floor, the powerful piece Broken Windows (2022) is presented using an old television set. On the screen, the video combines interviews with three anonymous individuals who participated in the looting of numerous stores in the streets of New York, amid the protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd by the police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. A round-shaped piece of wood covers the activist’s faces, protecting their identity while symbolising the barricades set up in front of major stores throughout the Black Lives Matters movement — which was believed to have raised wood prices by 275% in the USA as well as similar measures taken in France and across the globe. In Broken Windows every specific detail related to the locations and names are obscured by the blaring sound of a police car siren. A deliberate act of censorship intended to safeguard the narratives of these activists while appropriating and repurposing the codes of police force intimidation. For more than five years, the identities of those persons have to remain confidential to ensure their legal protection, making it possible for the artist to showcase in two years time the same video without protective measures!
Hannah Black, Broken Windows (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.