[Image: Fans Americanus at tate.com]
On the 1st of October 2020, the Tate has been running a free online event called Uniqio, Tate’s late: night in. The programme is artist led and direct to the viewer, containing talks, music, film and spoken word exploring kara Walker’s Fans Americanus.
I will be honest I was not able to watch the whole programme, but what the first 15 minutes of it was interesting. As the statue itself foreshadows the events that took place in 2020, those events of racism and injustice. Fans americanus is based on the Victoria Memorial in London and stands at 13 meters. The artwork demonstrates the role of public statues in society particularly in ways we would not realize. This is completely relevant today as we saw the controversies of public statues caused this summer during the Black Lives Matter protests and the campaigns for these figures to be removed. In the wake of this, it has made people realize that art is a part of history as it’s impossible to talk about history without art. Art is central to our history much like these statues. Art and history are a tradition. Walker’s piece explores this but also explores the idea of society not learning from memorials as they seem to have a strange invisibility.
I would highly recommend you watch this if you are interested in how art is still relatable today and how statues can have such an impact in the art world as well as society.
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