Taking the relationship between Somerset House and The Courtauld as the starting point, Matić speaks to a determination to widen perspectives, including the development of independent intellectual traditions that might subvert, displace, or resist the powers of the dominant culture.
Taking the form of participatory structures, you are invited to retrieve pin badges to wear and/or pass on to others. This structure will be located at New Wing reception.
About Rene Matić
Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough) is an artist currently working in London. Their work brings together themes of post-blackness, glitch feminism and subcultural theory in a meeting place they describe as rude(ness) – bringing to light (or dark) the fated conflicts and contradictions that one encounters while navigating the world in a body like their own.
Matić’s research reaches back to post-war Britain and the survival tactics and ‘tap dances’ of Britain’s Brown babies. They take their departure point from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska and 2-Tone. Matić’s current work predominantly explores the Skinhead movement, its founding as a multicultural marriage between West Indian and white working-class culture and its subsequent co-option by far-right white supremacists. They use this as a metaphor to examine their own experience of living in the Black British diaspora, to excavate white jealousy, the continued legacy of colonialism and the fear of a Black planet - all things which find convergence within and upon their mixed-race identity.
