cleave to the BLACK by Michael. travels to Leeds Art Gallery as part of its Jerwood/FVU Awards tour.  

The exhibition of the video work cleave to the BLACK will be accompanied by an exhibition of artworks from Leeds Art Gallery’s collection, co-curated by Michael,, responding to themes in the work, including the question ‘What would it be like to live on a land that loves you back?’ Ashley Holmes, whose sound design work features in the film, has produced a new sound work that will play in the space.

Echoing the art-historical tradition of the painted triptych, cleave to the BLACK is a three-screen video projection that offers a panoramic perspective on the legacies of the past that continue to leave an indelible mark on contemporary Black male experience. Alluding to episodes from the Bible and stories from African folklore and cosmology, the piece brings a subtle overtone of parable and myth to its carefully composed and quietly haunting scenes. Looping sequences of a procession of figures slowly climbing an outdoor staircase in a regulation council block are contrasted with a tableau of those figures sleeping (at nightly peace or at final rest). In between is a third screen depicting an arcadian landscape – a memory of a time long gone or a glimmer of better things to come? Far from a vision of utopia or a fantasy of paradise, it feels more like a space that is being reimagined and remade, from the bottom up. Moving through a series of gradually unfolding transitions, cleave to the BLACK, in its deliberate, meditative pace, celebrates slowness as a precondition of recovery and care and also as a lens through which the movements of the Black body attain a distinctive state of poise and grace. Made in close dialogue with a group of Black men from different London communities, cleave to the BLACK is a work of authentic, personal expression and evocative, atmospheric poetry. 

cleave to the BLACK by Michael. was commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022: a collaboration between Jerwood Arts and Film and Video Umbrella in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery.