The exhibition.

In May 2021, my signature piece entitled The Game Is Rigged was exhibited as a part of the Playing The Race Card Project, a virtual exhibition exploring what it means to ‘play the race card’. This project gave UK black artists the opportunity to creatively express their experiences with and views on ‘playing the race card’. Notably, we were asked to spin this negative phrase into a positive one through our artwork. However, I felt that it would be nonsensical to do so in today’s political and social climate. Instead, I wanted my artwork to display the harsh reality behind who actually plays the race card and shed light on how it is used by the oppressor against the oppressed.

The artwork.

The Game is Rigged is a piece depicting two people playing Black Jack. The black player’s hand consists of cards that read ‘Slavery’, ‘Prison’, ‘Oppression’, ‘Inequality’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’. These cards are not power cards and therefore, are of no value in the game. This symbolises the fact that black people are repeatedly told to ‘get over’ the past and turn a blind eye to the disproportionate incarceration rates, oppression and inequality they face. In 2020 when millions of people tried to call out the injustices faced by black people on a global scale, it was diluted by the ‘All Lives Matter’ movement, a power card held by the white player. Notably, the only power card the black player has is the Black Jack entitled ‘Systemic Racism’.

Systemic racism is both covert and overt in nature. However, in the instances when a black person tries to call out racism, we are told to stop playing ‘the race card’. This is a fallacy. The person often saying this is the one who is truly playing the race card to undermine our efforts to call out racism and facilitate change. Hence, the ‘Race’ card has the same effect that an Ace card has in the game of Black Jack: the Ace card enables the player to change the suit in the same way that the ‘Race’ card forces us to change the direction of the conversation that we need to have.

Therefore, this piece boldly challenges the idea of who truly plays ‘the race card’… it is the white player. They hold all the power cards that keeps us oppressed, including ‘Trump’, ‘All Lives Matter’, the ‘Wealth Gap’, white ‘Supremacy’ and white ‘Privilege’. Even if we did abandon the game by going back to the motherland, our countries are still being controlled and exploited as a result of ‘Colonisation’. This underlines that The Game Is Rigged and we will continue to be slaves to the system until we change the nature of the game.