“Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,” sang Billie Holiday, in the 1939 record “Strange Fruit”, which was banned in the US at the time for being too controversial—referencing the many race-related lynching that happened in the early twentieth century. A new show at Space gallery in London takes its cue from the song, featuring the work of Moroccan artist Soufiane Ababri. The show looks at racism, sport and homophobia, attempting to “dislodge the black body from tropes of blackness and hyper-masculinity, such as athleticism and animalism, which have been deeply inscribed by the Western heterosexual and racialised colonial gaze”.
