Black Voices, White Spaces: Metaphysical and Aesthetic Implications of Suffocation in the World of Art - Karam Weigert

The importance of art in society, both historically and in modern times, cannot be understated. From paintings to novels to film, artworks have been exceptionally influential in raising the collective consciousness of the public by bringing awareness to critical issues, critiquing contemporary values, and creating community. Art itself has extraordinary power. Its versatility in its countless forms, the ability for anyone to participate in its production, and the timelessness of certain mediums have made art an invaluable resource for the powerful and powerless alike. The messages that can be transmitted through emotions that can be evoked by a single image, page, or scene exemplify its utility. Its adaption to a constantly changing technological reality has also birthed new forms and means of its dissemination. As debates arise globally on what constitutes art, with Western traditions given primary attention, it is increasingly important to note how the logic of the current social hierarchy is ever-present in the world of art. This work seeks to paint a picture of white supremacy’s stranglehold on artistic production by first elaborating on the nature of whiteness, then presenting a theory ascribing a suffocating characteristic to whiteness and its implication on art, before finally discussing certain actions individuals and society at large can take to mitigate this suffocating effect.

Part I: The Homogeneity of Whiteness

It should come as no surprise that race, alongside its siblings' gender and class, is socially constructed and structurally reinforced. Racial categorisation followed from the West’s colonisation of the Americas and Africa, as a way of justifying the establishment of a system of mass enslavement of Black and Brown people. The creation of a dichotomy between the moral, rational white and the subhuman, savage nonwhite provided a moral pretext for the centuries of atrocities committed at the hands of Western powers. Beyond simple justifications, the invention of whiteness helped establish a distinct ‘European’ identity defined by negation, specifically by negating certain barbaric qualities that only the subjugated could possess.

It is important to note that whiteness is not a static concept. Rather whiteness is a ‘constellation of processes and practices [that is] dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels,’ (DiAngelo, 2011). It constantly adapts to meet the changing realities of society and politics. In fact, it is this very dynamism that has maintained the asymmetric power relations between white and nonwhite people globally. Particularly since over the last century people of colour have gained nominal political rights across the West, whiteness has needed to become more subversive in order to effectively disenfranchise a population whose access to the ballot box could no longer be explicitly denied. White power structures have had to consolidate strategies from dividing populations to unifying the oppressor class, revitalising its role as a versatile instrument in the bourgeoise’s toolbox.

Consequently, whiteness is in itself necessarily homogenising. A false identity must be constructed and aggressively sold to a populace in order to put as many degrees of separation between the most suffering of the in-group and the entirety of the out-group. This forced homogeny can be seen from the establishment of the proto-white supremacist Casta system in the Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of 18th-century Latin America to modern-day Neocolonial institutions of governance. Whether it is the arbitrary division of a native population or the onesided application of international law, the asymmetry between the Global North and South requires that the former operates uniformly. The glue keeping the pieces of the metaphorical genocidal colonising machine together is Whiteness. A white Briton and a white Hungarian do not possess many commonalities, but both have been inundated by the notion that their struggles are one and the same because they share the same colour skin. This thinking is tacit of course: no one expects people to openly praise the sanctity of the ‘white brotherhood,’ but this thinking manifests itself in many ways. Discussions around respectability politics and the fetishisation of bipartisanship are simple political manifestations of whiteness’ homogeneity. However, the most prominent (and increasingly relevant) manifestation is Western societies’ consciousness of international issues and their selective notion of solidarity. There is near universal support for the people of Ukraine in the West, but silence when it comes to the Yemenis, the Tigrayans, the Palestinians, the Congolese, the Rohingya, and many other peoples in the Global South experiencing near-identical forms of unjust suffering. The nearunanimous consensus from white society to only recognise the pain of other white people is one of the many ways that Black and Brown people globally are stripped of their humanity. To use the words of Foucault, ‘There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all’ (1985: 8). White supremacist power structures strive to make white people incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of others. Although Foucault’s analysis throughout the four volumes of The History of Sexuality is focused on the role of institutional power in influencing Western attitudes toward sexuality, it is still largely applicable to the conversation at hand. Institutions of white supremacy amplify messages of white solidarity and over time alter habits, language, and norms to curate a selective notion of humanity.

The homogeneity of whiteness is supplemented by the media, particularly art, consumed by white societies about the Global South. In his seminal work Orientalism, the post-colonial philosopher Edward Said (1979) lays out clearly the history and means by which the Western world is deluged with propaganda that fetishizes the ‘Orient’ (mainly used to describe the Arab world at the time of writing but the definition has been expanded by contemporary theorists to encompass the rest of the Global South) as this beautifully tortured land filled with savages that needed to be ‘saved’ and ‘educated’ about Western values. Orientalist messaging is embedded in all aspects of the media. Historically, extensive bodies of literature so confidently writing about the Arab world by men who had never even set foot there were the main vesicle for the dissemination of Orientalist media. Artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, William Holman Hunt, and John Frederick Lewis painted everything from portraits eroticising Arab women to picturesque landscapes that satiated the Western colonial appetites. Modern-day Orientalist art is significantly more subliminal. The subject of work may not explicitly cover the ‘Orient’ such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Lawrence of Arabia but uses themes that draw parallels with the white world’s view of the Global South. This is exemplified by works such as the Avatar films or Aladdin, which focus on emphasising antiquated gender roles and stereotypes that juxtapose the barbarian foreign environment the viewer finds themselves in and the ‘civilised’ society they are observing these works from.

This media of course solidifies the superiority complex innate in whiteness. This is fairly intuitive at some levels. If someone is a white supremacist of course they are going to believe in the superiority of white people. However, the constant passive consumption of this media indoctrinates consumers to buy into white supremacist power structures. Jasbir Puar discusses this in detail in her book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), in which she draws from Foucault, Deleuze, and Said to argue that the liberal state has appropriated sexual, gender, and racial identities to consolidate support for its actions abroad, relying on the construction of the ‘terrorist’ as the enemy that unites the citizenry. Puar uses the example of the US invasion of Iraq, in which justifications for the occupation expanded beyond the tried and tested rhetoric of democracy promotion to include the necessity of liberating queer and women Arabs. Her scholarship once again shows the dynamism of whiteness: when presented with challenges against the state’s imperialist actions, queerness is rebranded in order to exclude everyone that is not white, incorporating white queers into the ‘in-group’ as a sign of society’s supposed progress. In this way, structures of hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy can persist in a purportedly free society while white queers, blinded to their marginalisation, replicate ‘colonial and multiculturalist fetishisms,’ (Puar, 2005: 123) that promote narratives of US exceptionalism. Western values ostensibly imply equality and freedom for all, so naturally, they must be imposed violently on the backwards.

The consequences of this are inherently violent. From its imposition to its metastasis, Black and Brown's bodies are collateral damage in the protracted war it wages for complete control. As the battleground changes from slavery to decolonisation to civil rights, white supremacist power structures are unrelenting in their commitment to maintain asymmetry. The expansion of the state’s police power, over-policing of communities of colour, and shift to militaristic approaches to statecraft are all clear outlets of whiteness violence. Language and the homogenisation of the ‘white identity’ are, however, just as violent. The psychological effects of otherization on the ‘other’ are well documented. Separating a group of people from their collective humanity allows the most unspeakable atrocities to be committed against them, this fact is historically selfevident.

Whiteness permeation into the world of art has observable structural manifestations. Looking into the world of motion pictures, we see that 87% of TV and 92% of film executives are white (Dunn et. al 2021). Studios overwhelmingly choose white male directors for their largest studio productions, relegating their directors of colour to minor projects, of which 76% of them had budgets less than $20 million. With 75% of movie writers white, representation is of course negatively affected, in 16 years the share of Black and Latino characters with onscreen speaking roles increased by 0.4% and 1.9% respectively. Turning to the world of fine art, 76.3% of museum curators, 93% of museum directors, 92.6% of board chairs, and 89.3% of board members in the US are white (Tenuta & Walker, 2018). Putting all these numbers aside, the way that artistic mediums are developed and presented to the public is a reflection of the architecture of white supremacy.

Part II: Suffocation and White Supremacy

Now what exactly do I mean when I say, ‘whiteness has a suffocating effect? I would like to pose a definition of suffocation that is better suited to confront the metaphysical realities of art. Suffocation, in this sense, is the imposition of an authority’s will (institutional standards, societal norms, etc.) onto the artist, ultimately stripping them of their agency to choose the subject of their art.

There are two kinds of suffocation: diffused suffocation and targeted suffocation. The former refers to the suffocation an artist feels by virtue of participating in society and having to interact with dominant cultural values. Targeted suffocation, on the other hand, is a much more direct form of suffocation that an artist feels at the intention of another.

Targeted suffocation has a specific end goal in mind, and the imposition of the authority’s will be hierarchically imposed, typically forcefully with resistance violently responded to. Political actors are usually responsible for targeted suffocation while social structures and institutions are the main agents of diffused suffocation.

All artists to a certain extent are suffocating. Diffused suffocation is an inescapable aspect of the artist’s journey. Dominant values are amplified by institutions of social, political, and economic governance, and if an artist chooses to produce work within the confines of these values, can we say for certain they chose the topic of their own volition or were conditioned by decades of intense programming to promote contemporary ideals? The existence of art as a resistance to the artist’s status quo may seem to disprove the notion of suffocation, however, I’d argue that it is simply further proof of its existence as the values of the time impose barriers on the artist who then produces their piece as a means to break through them. The fact that resistance art does not exist in and of itself and can only exist in relation to other structures indicates that the suffocation an artist feels drives the exigency and mode of their work. I seek to imagine a world without suffocation, in which an artist has a choice over the direction and content of their work, producing not as a reaction to the imposition of certain values upon a society.

Historically, targeted suffocation takes many forms. One notable (and very literal) example is the Saxon King Augustus’ imprisonment of the alchemist Boetger, who was forced to make porcelain for the rest of his life. Suffocation has also materialised in the form of state repression and propaganda art. From Nazi Germany’s violent suppression and attempted erasure of ‘degenerate art’ to Oliveira Salazar’s infamous use of architects and sculptors to inaugurate his fascistic view of a ‘pluricontinental’ Portugal at the Portuguese World Exhibit, governments will unashamedly use art to cement their legitimacy. In the United States, the militaryentertainment complex is famously propped up by the Department of Defence and the Central Intelligence Agency, influencing the content of movies and music videos, even shaping the trajectory of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s. From Ironman to Katy Perry’s Part of Me, military narratives are injected into the nature of these pieces in an attempt to sterilise the image of the armed forces and get the public’s sympathy for its imperialist actions abroad. Suffocation transcends borders and is reproduced in the logic of colonial relationships between former colonies and their colonisers. The French government’s co-production agreement with countries such as Lebanon has allowed it near complete control of the Lebanese film industry, giving it the final say in what films are produced and the narratives they purport.

Targeted suffocation seeks to mimic the pattern and implicitness of diffused suffocation before eventually transforming into it. Targeted suffocation is significantly less stable than its counterpart due to its hierarchical nature. It involves actors that the populace can point its finger at if they are made aware of their indoctrination. The military establishment, capitalist class, and political elite can always be deposed from power. Although suffocation affects the artist, external material circumstances determine whether the suffocation persists. Targeted suffocation begins to effectively imitate diffused suffocation after prolonged periods of time: eventually, actors are able to establish institutions that operate in themselves to amplify values throughout a population without needing a group to actively watch over and intervene in the everyday operation of suffocation, at which point the transformation to diffused suffocation is complete.

The process of suffocation’s consolidation into the internal workings of institutions of governance follows the relationship between ideology and institutions in Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. Gramsci contends the dominant class seeks to use its control of the state apparatus and its appendages such as education (the school), religion (the church), and media to impose bourgeois values within the subjugated individual. Civil society objectifies hegemony and connects all notions of civility and respectability to these values, making resistance intolerable and an affront to culture. Ideology becomes normalised to the point that reflection and criticism are impossible. Dominant values’ incorporation into the ‘common sense,’ a largely uncritical state of collective consciousness, silence the ‘subaltern’ groups who can never properly communicate their opposition to the status quo (Gramsci, 1971). The parallel trajectory of the suffocation effect when fully realised to ideology’s cultural hegemonisation is not coincidental as the exact same institutions that objectify values perpetuate suffocation. The end goal is to make oppression so intrinsic to the regular functioning of society that no fingers can be pointed towards a singular ‘culprit.’

Suffocation is not necessarily immoral. People do not live in a vacuum, and we are bound to be influenced by others. We live in society; therefore we suffocate. What is immoral, and consequently the main focus of this article, is the suffocation that is produced by unjust structures of power. A question I will pose here but will answer in the next section is what do we do when suffocation arises from popular values that are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc.? In regard to my first concern, whiteness provides a unique threat to BIPOC people in the art world by reducing artists to their marginalised identities, constricting them to produce artwork that is palatable for white audiences, mainly the gratuitous exhibition of trauma.

The normality of white supremacist values in pop culture is the paramount example of a vehicle of targeted suffocation transitioning into a permanent institution of diffused suffocation. Whiteness once required violent imposition and constant exercise of state violence to survive, but now its logic is reproduced in the daily operation of society. Art and media have become some of these institutions that whiteness has permeated into, and Black and Brown artists' ability to operate within these circles is significantly restricted. The possibility of success is dangled just above artists of colour like a carrot on a stick, only within reach if they act, speak, and produce in a way deemed respectable by white society. Art’s commodification is by no means a new phenomenon and is a natural product of society’s organisation around a capitalist mode of production. Capitalism provides its own unique form of both targeted and diffused suffocation, restricting artists within the confines of profitability. However, for artists of colour, the intersectional restrictions created by capitalism and white supremacy create a unique suffocating experience. The bourgeois seek to trivialise Black identity yet wield it to create profitable art that can be sold as ‘uniquely Black’ or Brown. Structures of white supremacy have seen the appropriation of many aspects of Black and Brown culture, from hairstyles to lexicon, and their incorporation into pop culture, however, given that Blackness’ ontological position has been defined as a result of negation, the only unique thing artists of colour are allowed to reflect on is their trauma. White society can replicate any aspect of the cultures of oppressed people except the pain and suffering they have created. The incapability to understand the trauma caused by centuries of colonisation and slavery is what has led to the rise of a ‘woke’ culture within white spaces that treats surface-level acknowledgement of the horrors of racism as a status symbol. The demand to showcase Black and Brown pain has increased in order to satisfy the desire to proudly carry the badge of ‘ally.’

This suffocation’s impact is two-fold. Firstly, people of colour have become instruments of entertainment production for white society. Moreover, an individual’s ‘Blackness’ or ‘Brownness’ becomes the central tenet of their external identity. We typically see identities as multifaceted and dynamic aspects of ourselves that we present through our actions and being. However, people of colour are not afforded that basic respect. All other aspects of their identity become tangential to their racial identity. This is even seen in the language we use to refer to artists. ‘Black director,’ ‘Latino painter,’ and ‘Arab sculptor’ may be accurate descriptions of an artist’s racial and ethnic background, however, these labels are used to differentiate them from the director, painter, and sculptor who we have been programmed to automatically assume are white. The implication is that an artist’s Brownness is what directs their art and that their passion for art is secondary to this racial aspect. While it may be the case that their experiences as members of a marginalised group shape the subject of an artist’s work, white institutions make this assumption and run with it in the hope of making a profit. Secondly, when the trauma of the colonised falls victim to the commodity fetish, it loses its meaning. Artworks coercively produced to profit off of depictions of suffering do not force white consumers to reflect on how they perpetuate the violence of white supremacy and imperialism but become a symbol of how supposedly capable they are of empathising and making up for the ‘sins of their ancestors.’

When artists of colour lack the agency to produce the pieces they desire and are coerced into incorporating the same themes, a false narrative is produced about their communities. The depictions of Black and Brown pain become the only window into communities of colour that white society gets to see through, (ostensibly) framed by said members. Consequently, expressions of Black joy are erased, and another aspect of humanity the marginalised is stripped from them. This erasure has many impacts that extend beyond the world of art, such as in the world of medicine in which doctors have systematically under-treated Black patients for pain. The same freedoms white artists have been given and privileges white communities get in their depictions ought to be extended to all.

Part III: Moving Forward?

Suffocation alters the way in which we experience art. While the modern individual has already been forced to adopt a perverse consumption of artistic pieces, the artwork of artists of colour is subjected to an even worse form of consumption. Agency is wrested from artists of colour and their artwork tokenised, making it incapable of being experienced and enjoyed. A degree of separation must necessarily exist between the work and the public if one exists between the artist and their work.

Therefore, we must reformulate a new holistic identity of the ‘artist,’ one that cannot be racialized and weaponised against Black and Brown people. This does not necessarily mean a complete change to our lexicon, but at the very least an acknowledgement that people of colour are capable of being artists in themselves. Divorcing assumptions about the artist’s racial identity is a key step. As a result, we give artists the autonomy to define themselves and explain to their audience the nature of the production of their work or the way the work is meant to be consumed.

Once again Said’s scholarship becomes invaluable, when seeking to equip ourselves with the skills necessary to comprehend whether or not the artwork one consumes is racist. He provides two methodological devices one ought to use: strategic location and strategic formation. Strategic location describes, ‘the author's position in a text with regard to the…material [they] write,’ and is critical to uncovering the biases an artist carries into their work. Art is never produced in the abstract and the creative process is never done in a vacuum. Whiteness permeates into even the most sacred of artistic spaces we must be conscious of this fact. On the other hand, strategic formation is an analytical tool necessary to explain how works ‘acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large,’ (Said, 1979). This device is crucial to critically understand why certain works are propelled into the limelight and the implicitness of the harmful messages they purport. The use of strategic location and formation in tandem provides art consumers with the ability to consume a wide variety of art styles while having a comprehensive understanding of the way narratives are communicated. Once the public begins adopting these devices en masse, the terminal impact of widespread awareness is that subliminal racist messaging which has always flown under the radar of ‘post-racial’ Western society can no longer be replicated nor tacitly internalised by consumers.

The material actions we can take as consumers are fairly diverse. First and foremost, we must boycott exhibitions in museums organised by white curators who seek to exemplify and position gratuitous expressions of BIPOC trauma in just the right way to trigger a reaction from the public. Expressions of Black trauma organised by Black curators who collaborate with artists who willingly choose the subject of their work are fundamentally different from the status quo of profitability and trauma exploitation. The economic and social power held by the masses cannot be understated. The public’s ability to strip notoriety, prestige, and importantly funds from these institutions is key in seeing change materialise from pressure. Already, museums have lost their title of the ‘managers of consciousness’ and do and have already reacted to efforts “from Istanbul, Brooklyn and São Paulo, to Sydney, Abu Dhabi and St. Petersburg,” to boycott and resist art’s commodification by neoliberal institutions (Sholette, 2018). Collective action against institutions that illegitimately govern the art world must not end until white society no longer holds a monopoly on positions of leadership within museums, art galleries, and production studios.

Art is one of the most important facets of human existence. It is a testament to the creative capacity that we each possess as individuals. With the suffocating effect of white supremacy and capitalism becoming increasingly restricted, an existential threat to the world of art arises. We must strive for genuine consumption and experiences with art that appreciates the artist as well as the work in and of itself.

References

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https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFi le/249/116

Dunn, J., Lyn, S., Onyeador, N., & Zegeye, A. (2021, March 11). Black representation in film and TV: The challenges and impact of increasing diversity. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved December 2023, from https://www.mckinsey.com/featuredinsights/diversity-and-inclusion/blackrepresentation-in-film-and-tv-the-challengesand-impact-of-increasing-diversity.

Foucault, M. (1992). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. Penguin Books.

Puar, J.K. (2005). Queer Times, Queer Assemblages. Social Text, 23(3-4), 121–139. doi: 10.1215/01642472-23-3-4_84-85-121

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage

Sholette, G. (2018, July 9). Does Our Age of Art World Boycotts and Museum Protests Prove That Resistance Is Not Futile?. Frieze. Retrieved December 2023, from https://www.frieze.com/article/does-our-ageart-world-boycotts-and-museum-protestsprove-resistance-not-futile.

Tenuta, R., & Walker, V. (2018, January 19). Museum Board Leadership 2017: A National Report. American Alliance of Museums

https://www.aam-us.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/01/eyizzp-downloadthe-report.pdf