Draw with illustrated objects of Black British art in the Decentralise interactive toolkit
Created by Somerset House’s Young Producers collective with design studio Comuzi, the online platform offers a fun and informative way to learn more about Black cultural history.
Words
Somerset House has launched
Decentralise, a new digital art project offering a playful way to interact with Black British cultural history. Made by the institution’s Young Producers collective, together with design studio Comuzi, the website allows visitors to draw using objects of Black cultural significance as brushes, to make their own digital artworks. The illustrated objects range from a hair relaxer by David Hammons to a speaker system by Gaika and a Pan African Flag by Larry Achiampong, all taken from previous exhibitions at Somerset House.
Mixed Messages
Filmmaker Rhea Storr, who won the 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize, uses the concept of carnival to evoke the contrasts and conflicts bound up within one version of modern British-Caribbean identity.
âIt is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question.â This quote, from James Baldwinâs
Notes of a Native Son, serves as a kind of epigram to Rhea Storrâs 2017 film
Junkanoo Talk. Suitably enough, it epitomises the mixture of affection and scrutiny with which Storrâs work explores black and mixed-race British-Caribbean identity, in particular through the tradition of Junkanoo, a type of costumed street carnival with Bahamian roots.