A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Rawlins’s 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 is also the publisher of an online contemporary Caribbean art journal,
Draconian Switch). This image is part of
I Am Sugar (2018), a series of photographs that respond to Stuart Hall’s 1991 essay, Old and New Ethnicities, in which Hall writes, “I am the sugar in the bottom of the English cup of tea.”
Rawlins has translated this directly into a fist, clenched in the symbolic gesture of Black Power and solidarity, rising from a teacup—a synecdoche of colonialism. The work appears as part of Get Up, Stand Up Now, at Somerset House, on view until 15 September.
