These Things Matter: Empire, Exploitation and Everyday Racism

A Black person shows their back, which has been painted in white with slurs

EXHIBITION

These Things Matter: Empire, Exploitation and Everyday Racism

17 November 2022 – 19 February 2023

Blackwell Hall, Weston Library

This exhibition is now closed.

About the exhibition

These Things Matter: Empire, Exploitation and Everyday Racism explored the devastating and long-term effects of the British Empire. It was curated in partnership with the Museum of Colour (MoC) and Oxford-based charity Fusion Arts.

Available globally through the MoC's digital platform and in person at the Weston Library, These Things Matter showed how every day communications maintained the British Empire and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Discover how maps, letters and even the Bible were edited deliberately to manipulate millions of people and to justify the value of trading African bodies.

The exhibition featured selected artefacts from the Bodleian Libraries' colonial collections. These were positioned alongside seven contemporary responses from artists selected by the MoC and Fusion Arts: Bunmi Ogunsiji, Grace Lee, Amina Atiq, Dirty Freud, Nilupa Yasmin, Mahdy Abo Bahat and Johannah Latchem. Each installation examined an artefact through a 21st-century lens and is a raw and, at times, brutal illustration of the artist’s personal response.

These Things Matter ran in Blackwell Hall at the Weston Library and online through the Museum of Colour.

About the artists

Amina Atiq

Amina Atiq is a Yemeni poet, performance artist, creative-cultural practitioner and award-winning community activist. She is an anti-racism advisory member with Curious Minds, Artist Fellow at DaDaFest and Social Cohesion Fellow Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Residency 2022.

Bunmi Ogunsiji

Bunmi Ogunsiji is a re-emerging British-Nigerian writer living in London. Exploration of Heritage and the ‘troublesome’ intersection of race, age and gender are at the heart of her creative practice.

Dirty Freud

Dirty Freud are an electronic live and recording outfit who met in Niche Sheffield, then moved into the bassline scene. They found success after moving back to the North of England. The music contains elements of dubstep, 2-step garage, bassline. It is simply Dirty Cinematic Electronica.

Grace (SOME.GAL)

Grace (SOME.GAL) is a multidisciplinary artist and Digital Art Curator from Sheffield. Her practice is experimental; incorporating mixed media including painting, animation, costume, video, sound design and installation. Grace has a desire to create work which honours figures and narratives hidden from the mainstream.