Thinking about mapping this brief review of the history, depth, scale, pain and sometimes pleasures of Resistance, curated by Steve McQueen and Clarrie Wallis at Turner Contemporary, I set out to share the story of ‘unseeing’ (largely because the world is so loud), but also the affecting power of seeing – of noticing – and of the recognition that results from those rare occasions of quietude, and not necessarily silence. I planned to share a passage by theorist Kevin Quashie from his The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, a 2012 investigation of introspection as a mode of resistance. In it, the writer arrives at the idea of transcendental luminescence – a kind of spiritual euphoria – without rousing so much as a single decibel of noise. But something stopped me in mid-flow: ego. I’ll move on to that in a bit.
At a first, and perhaps a tad too hasty, look at the black-and-white images in the exhibition and in the hefty accompanying monograph, I felt a temporary recoil of energy – a distancing. Why? I wondered. Why is it that narratives of resistance against tyranny are often so dour? Which brings us to the ego – my own. When assigned reviews of this kind, with a note to the effect that ‘I think you are going to love this’ or ‘This is right up your alley’, I wonder what I have done to deserve it: Correspondent of Misery; Our Man Filing from the Republic of Sorrow. Must be the newsprint stain from years of pit-deep immersion into Bruce Chatwin in my teens. But I was wrong to balk. The exhibition at Turner Contemporary is indeed heavy. And yet dour it ain’t.
Vast in its scope, Resistance is thematically arranged in a chronological timeline to tell the stories of triumph over adversity in – lest we forget – an empire that exported segregation and internment all over the world. Often large exhibitions eschew in-depth examination in pursuit of comprehensiveness; however, perhaps taking a leaf out of a similar undertaking a decade ago, the exhibition Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, curated by Okwui Enwezor, Resistance retains an unlikely intimacy. It talks to a viewer who might be oblivious to this island’s stories of resilience and righteousness, in ways that shows how specific events and epochs are suffused with subjectivity. Steve McQueen’s life’s work, from documenting the gold miners of South Africa to his ‘Small Axe’ television series about the Black West Indian experience and the transformation of civil rights in the UK (and everything in between), extols his love – and perhaps his vocation – as a child of the Windrush generation for not only depicting its heritage but also for social commentary. His inner eye sees, excavates and ultimately challenges the viewer to make room for beauty and its role in our existence – which is to say, beauty festooned with thorns and amid tears – that history is often predicated on.
And yet each show worth its weight should be taken at its own merit, and not its star curator’s celebrity. The show teems with not-so-subtle but nonetheless unasked questions of a linguistic nature. What, actually, is resistance? How does it express itself? How does it look and feel? Do photographs of the pride march or Notting Hill Carnival, for instance, ferry the same political cargo as, say, anti-fascism and anti-war protests? And also, why is now the right time for this show? It could only be fate – and fate is never without context – that animated such a project at the high noon of a resurgence of fascism, war crimes, tin-pot dictators, right-wing billionaires, nativists and natalists, and with neo-Nazis running amok. The curators could not have prophesied the apocalyptic time leap that brought us to the brutalist present we have not begun resisting, or even know how to. A placard declaring queer love is not about to halt anti-transgender health-care defunding, let alone stop a massacre. And yet love is all we have in this hour of chaos.
‘Resistance’ is on show at Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 1 June. For more information, visit turnercontemporary.org
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