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It has come to my attention that in response to questions about their position on current issues, the director of @icalondon, where I work, has been using a programme I designed to claim that the ICA has been responding to issues of structural anti-Blackness for the past 2 years.
Our director has not notified me that he is using my work in this way. He has not asked my permission. He has not reached out to ask me to collaborate on a response — not that the burden of responding to these issues should fall on Black employees.
He has co-opted my work, falsely represented his and the ICA's commitment to addressing issues around structural anti-Blackness, and effectively used my work to avoid doing that work.
My programme, Confronting the ICA, was not an ICA initiative. Comprised of two workshops facilitated by artist Camille Barton, it was a programme I devised in response to anti-Blackness and misogynoir that I experienced at the ICA.
I executed it to create space for my colleagues to reflect on their experiences as racialized and gendered people, but first and foremost, it was an attempt to make the ICA a more livable space for me.
I have never received proper acknowledgment, praise, or compensation from our director for doing this additional, valuable labor. In fact, after I announced the first workshop (held August 2018), he reprimanded me for not scheduling it at a time when he could attend.
I went out of my way to get his sign-off on the second workshop (March 2019). He took so long to respond to my emails that we had to delay the event, an inconvenience to me and Camille. Finally, he approved the date. We held the workshop. He did not attend.
But he says “we” have been doing this work for two years.
The first workshop showed promise but during the second, Camille and I had to endure comments like, “But Irish people are oppressed, too,” before we even made any mention of race or Blackness. That’s not to say that a number of my colleagues didn’t engage deeply and meaningfully.
Later that month, after a period of reflection, I sent an email to all staff saying I could no longer facilitate the programme because I no longer had the capacity. I invited colleagues who thought the work was important to step up and continue organizing workshops with Camille.
A few colleagues expressed interest but ultimately nothing materialized. Yet our director says “we” have been holding these sessions for two years, and that we continue to do so.
I share this in hopes that whoever has been receiving our director’s emails, especially if they are Black, sees it and knows the truth. I wouldn’t know who these recipients are — I haven’t been made privy to these emails.
I haven’t consulted with our director before posting this because I was not consulted before my work was co-opted.
It is shameful that the only thing our director can point to as “evidence” that the ICA is antiracist is my programme, and that he has to lie to make his and the ICA’s engagement with it appear more robust.
Nothing I’m saying here is any different from what I have said for years in curatorial meetings, away days, staff meetings, and one-on-ones: “We need to confront racism within this institution.” “We need to champion Black artists and target Black audiences.”
“I am doing the work — when will you step up and do your part?”
Maybe after being called out on social media in this particular moment, our director will finally hear me.
Maybe after being called out on social media in this particular moment, our director will finally hear me.
There is much more I could say but I’ll leave it at this: as a Black woman working in a contemporary art institution, I have been quietly doing the work of confronting anti-Blackness for a long time —
— caring for Black practitioners, cultivating Black audiences and making them feel comfortable at the ICA, informally recruiting Black staff, bringing my lived experience to my programmes and our collective curatorial processes, and more.
I am not the only one — there are many of us at different institutions doing this work. And it is tiring. It is lonely. And contrary to what they would have you believe, we’re often doing it without the support of — even in spite of — the institution.
