Restraint Restrained

2019

Mixed Media Exhibition

The works draw on the experiences and narratives of the many mentally ill Black people who have met their deaths in police custody or mental health facilities, through excessive restraint holds and other violent and negligent behaviours. Restraint Restrained references the central premise of Frantz Fanon’s essay Concerning Violence, in which he claims that in order for the decolonisation of indigenous land to happen, a total and violent purging of the colonisers by the indigenous people must occur. Anderson repurposes this idea to consider how the contemporary Black mind and body, as a ‘colonised space’, is processed through public health and police institutions; understanding such authorities as embodiments and enforcers of structural white supremacy.

The exhibition comprised four works that questioned our perceptions of ‘violence’ and the sacrifices necessary to envision a liberation of the Black body and mind. The works reflect on the affective violence of institutional racism and the revolutionary strategies that Black activists, artists and community organisers have proposed to tackle these oppressive racialized forces.

The work was commissioned by Block 336 in partnership with Black Cultural Archives with support from Arts Council England, Elephant Trust, Delivered By Post, Lux, Spike Island, Black Thrive and Lambeth Mind.