Keith Piper and Tate Britain's 'undeniably racist' mural

An artist commissioned to create a response to a "racist" artwork in Tate Britain has said it is important to display the offensive mural to "understand history".

Keith Piper, a key member of the Blk Art Group, was asked by the gallery in 2022 to counter Rex Whistler's "The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats". The 1927 floor-to-ceiling mural contains vignettes showing a Black child kidnapped from his mother – who is depicted naked in a tree – to be enslaved, as well as caricatures of Chinese people. 

The gallery's fine-dining restaurant, which housed the mural, was closed to the public in 2020, after the Tate's ethics committee said the artwork was "offensive". But the mural was restored to view this week, alongside Piper's work "Viva Voce", a 20-minute two-screen video piece in which Whistler is interrogated about his work by a fictional academic called Professor Shepherd. 

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'We look or we forget'

Defending the gallery's decision to put the "undeniably racist" Grade I listed mural back on display, Piper told The Guardian that it was "important to look at historical depictions in order to understand history". 

"I know there is an argument among young people now that these images re-traumatise," he said, "but I think we either look or forget." 

The mural, which depicts a hunting party riding through a fantastical landscape, has prompted many complaints over the years. The Guardian reported that the ethics committee was aware of concerns in 2013, after a £45 million restoration of the artwork brought the racist imagery to greater attention. Piper also told The New York Times that during his research he had uncovered complaints from as far back as the 1970s.

But it was only in 2020, after George Floyd's murder and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, that a groundswell of anti-racism campaigners "demanded the mural's removal" after controversial sections were highlighted on social media, said the paper.

'A deft act of cakeism'

Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson told The Art Newspaper that the furore over the mural was "one of the most challenging issues I have faced". 

"It represented an extraordinary quandary," he said. "Key aspects of Tate's mission are in direct conflict – providing inclusivity to welcome our visitors and as custodian of an immovable, site-specific artwork." 

Under current British heritage laws, the gallery could not easily alter or remove the mural. Last year, the government published guidance saying that museums must "retain and explain" problematic statues or artworks that are part of a building.

Piper's "Viva Voce" is a little "clunky", said The Telegraph's chief art critic Alastair Sooke. But by commissioning such a "well-intentioned and measured" response from a Black British artist to a work of art that it cannot remove, the Tate "rather deftly pulls off an act of 'cakeism'". The mural remains intact "while hostility towards it will be, for now, I assume, assuaged".