My daughter saw Khadija Saye’s prints
At the British Library exhibition,
And when I told her that I broke down in tears,
At the exhibition at SVA,
She, too, said that she was devastated:
‘To be devastated: causing shock, distress or grief’.
It’s not just the power of the art, is it?
It’s also the context.
Grenfell.
This tragedy, this life, this art, that building:
Both a consequence of the past
And an expression of the present tense.
Diaspora:
The movement, migration or scattering
of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland.
As opposed to colonialism,
Imperialism, enslavement,
And maritime expansion.
And a country and capitalism
That has sought and continues to seek
To plunder and people the globe for profit
While preventing asylum seekers from coming here,
And othering them at best.
This duality of insularity and global plunder.
This deceitful hypocrisy and immorality.
The feeling of impotence in the face
Of this hegemonic ideology.
The haunting melancholy of this art.
Grenfell as historic and present tense metonymy.
Crack-up Capitalism. Structural racism.
And, still, they talk of deregulation
And ‘a bonfire of red tape’.
Khadija Saye:
In this space we breathe.
The tracks of my tears.