“When you think of blackface, we have to remember how much popular culture is shaped by it,” the British director and artist says following his personal new commission on show in Rotterdam
has been drawn to the film for so long. “It’s been about 20 years that I’ve wanted to work with this material,” he tells AnOther at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where his film,, was a major highlight of this year’s programme. “It was one of those situations where the tail wags the dog,” explains McQueen. “I wanted to work with it because I wanted to erase Al Jolson.
But perhaps the most haunting part of the work comes in the form of the artist’s own narration, as he recounts a story told to him by his father shortly before his death. McQueen explains how his father arrived in Florida from the West Indies to work as an orange picker. After sneaking out of his camp one night with two fellow workers and heading to a nearby bar, the three Black men are refused service, leading to an altercation and ultimately the murder of his two acquaintances.
© Steve McQueen. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photography byThe combination of his father’s story with that of Jack Robin is, in the artist’s view, “about protection.” “All I know is at that moment, what my father told me was when he knew he was going to die,” says McQueen.
The film’s presentation in Holland feels particularly relevant. Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, is a centuries-old annual celebration in the Low Countries that accompanies the feast of St Nicholas, during which adults apply blackface to resemble the Black Moor who accompanied the saint from Spain. For McQueen, who lives in Amsterdam with his family, this cultural context only added to the film’s importance.
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