Entangled Pasts, 1768-now at the Royal Academy

Spoiler alert:

One of the best exhibitions I’ve visited so far.

The level of interpretation was a chef kiss:

-“The First Supper” by Tavares Strachan upon entrance and open to the public while positioning themselves in front of Joshua Reynolds’ statue?

-Mirrors in the frise to include the viewer in the narrative?

-Break the row while male busts with the reflection of the black male bust?

-The lyrical juxtaposition between a free and a slaved woman through sculpture and video?

-Finish with such simplicity and elegance with “justice for all”?

-Conversations between old and contemporary work?

“Entangled Pasts, 1768-now”, Art, Colonialism, and Change…The three words I need to be totally in no matter what. The exhibition explores connections between art associated with the Royal Academy and Britain’s colonial histories. At its founding by artists in 1768, the RA was an “ornament” to Britain’s empire. For over 250 years, artists and architects active in Britain have experienced and expressed divergent relationships to imperial histories. Today, that legacy continues to form part of the fabric of everyday life, physically and emotionally, across social, economic, cultural, and political, nationally and global.

100 artworks acting as a powerful lens through which complex situations can be viewed and nuanced understandings of them. Radical, illuminating, unexpected, compelling. Congrats to the curators, the rest of the team and the artists, in this life or the past. Hats off.