Empowerment, from the series I AM SUGAR

A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Rawlins’ work investigates the ‘pop-cultural’ poetics and politics of life in the Caribbean. He examines the contested histories and realities of colonialism, Black identity and diaspora politics. Rawlins’ work has been featured internationally and he is a past artist resident at the Vermont Studio Center, USA. Rawlins is also the publisher of an online contemporary Caribbean art journal, Draconian Switch.

Empowerment is part of I AM SUGAR (2018), a series of digital photographs responding to Stuart Hall’s Old and New Ethnicities essay of 1991. In this essay, Hall states that “I am the sugar in the bottom of the English cup of tea”. This photograph situates a Black Power hand rising from a quintessentially English tea cup, designed in England, made in China and sold via Amazon. The work examines how the Atlantic is viewed from Britain and the United States and vice versa, recalling the individuals that shaped both the British Empire and the descendants of African slaves, wherever they may be in the diaspora.