Tate Britain Unveils Counterpoint to Offensive Mural
By Calla Mitchell
The mural has been part of a restaurant for almost a century. Photo via BBC News
Cancel or counter? Tate Britain entertains this perplexing debate with their 2022-24 “racist Whistler Mural” project. Rex Whistler’s “derogatory and distressing” mural from 1927, residing once on the walls of a prestigious restaurant, are, as of 2024, existing in the space of a gallery setting. The scenes, left unconfronted and harmful, projected “unequivocally offensive” and “traumatising” imagery into the eater’s space. As museum director Farquharson implored, “once I noticed them, I couldn’t unnoticed them”. However, sealed off since 2020, or better ‘cancelled’, the mural has now entered the context of the ‘countered’.
In response to a growing outrage from the public, the almost 100-year-old and 55-foot-long mural was headed for distinction. However, The Tate Britain opted to keep it in place, and instead of forgetting it, they contextualised the racist imagery for public education. “Some wanted to shut the door”, but Farquharson insisted the mural “provides an opportunity to learn”, in which the work “becomes an important witness to history”. The Tate’s approach is one of confrontation; it is a conversation with the terrifying realities of historical forgetfulness, in other words, the act ‘to brush under the rug’. Here, The Tate want to, quite literally, take hold of this rug and lift it from its place, revealing the “troubling aspects of our history” underneath.
Keith Piper, Vive Voce, 2024. Photo via The Art Newspaper
Pulling the rug from its place, the Tate commissioned Keith Piper, part of the British Black Arts movement, to set up an educational platform for the mural. His “Vice Voce”, Latin for “by word of mouth”, installation is a two-screen piece dramatising an imaginary conversation between Whistler and an interrogative university lecturer. For 20 minutes actor Ian Pink responds as Whistler to actor Ellen O’Grady who interviews as Professor Shepard. The mural in question depicts a black child kidnapped from his mother and enslaved, and caricatures of Chinese figures. In response to these racist images, the 20-minute conversation questions Whistler’s black representations. When asked what Whistler’s reaction to Piper’s installation would be Farquharson concluded that “he would take out his paintbrush, to paint over the passages. But only the artist can do that”.
Piper states: “we need to recognise the importance throughout black struggles, the importance of difficult images”, and to ‘counter’ and educate is the solution. “Things that are out of sight go out of mind”. Whilst the politics of cancel culture for art is an arduous one, and traumatic for observers too, the intangibility of this history can, and should, become and remain tangible.
Would you choose a cancel or counter approach? Personally, I choose the counter approach, as Piper says: “we either look or forget”.
Bibliography
Bailey, Martin. “Tate Britain unveils Keith Piper’s artistic response to racist Rex Whistler mural”. The Art Newspaper. March, 11, 2024. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/03/11/one-of-the-most-challenging-issues-ive-faced-tate-britain-director-on-confronting-racist-whistler-mural.
McLaren, Bonnie. “Tate Britain unveils new counterpoint to offensive Rex Whistler mural”. BBC News. March, 12. 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68546969.