Case study: Making multiculture

Yinka Shonibare’s feted public sculpture, ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’, recently unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, is a fitting monument to the impact of multiculturalism on London and on the UK in general. The artist describes the work as “honouring the many cultures and ethnicities that are still breathing precious wind into the sails of the United Kingdom”. Multiculturalism remains, however, a stubbornly contested subject, not least in the rarefied world of visual arts in Britain, where at times it has inspired passionate if not acrimonious debate. Indeed some interpret Shonibare’s Fourth Plinth work as more of a requiem to multiculturalism. And there is an increasingly widespread view that multiculturalism has become a constraining, bureaucratic set of practices that undermine and restrict the freedom of Black and Asian artists to make whatever work they like, especially if it doesn’t relate to the strictures of race. Take Black History Month; there is a well-worn joke in some circles that the only time of the year that Black artists get a call to do work in museums and galleries is in October.
 

DIVERSITY AT RISK?
However, there are some museum and visual arts workers who are very concerned by the growing momentum for a critique of multiculturalism. At a recent debate at Tate Britain, organised by the Tate Cross Cultural Programme, some of those concerns were expressed by members of the audience and the panel. It was felt that the changed climate for arts funding may have an adverse effect on diversity programmes – in terms of jobs, and also more generally on culturally diverse perspectives in museums and galleries.
While some of these concerns are understandable, there is arguably a progressive case to be made for rethinking diversity and multiculturalism for the global times in which we live. There is thinking across political lines that is sceptical about the effectiveness of a top-down, bureaucratic approach to diversity that uses a ‘tick box’ method to cultural difference. It could be argued that the critical multiculturalism that emerged as a radical critique of racism, and the exclusion of Black artists out of the struggles for equality by minority artists and communities, has over time been appropriated by a bureaucratic logic in which cultural difference is ‘managed’ in order to control and ‘tame’ it more effectively. Has this created a deadening and restrictive artistic horizon for many minority artists? Do they feel obliged to apply for diversity initiatives because they see it is the only way to get a foothold in
the ‘system’?
TAKING A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
There is much in this argument that holds merit. However a number of important refinements to this general analysis can be made. First, it needs to be clearly understood that there is a difference between multiculturalism as an objective ‘fact’ of the cultural life of a hyper diverse global city such as London on the one hand, and the appropriated ‘ideology’ of a bureaucratic, ‘managed multiculturalism’ (that is highly problematic for the reasons detailed above), on the other. Second, there is a need to radically rethink nation-state centered, bureaucratic approaches to multiculturalism in ways that are sensitive to the new realities that we find ourselves in: the impact of globalisation not only on migration demographics in the UK but also on artistic practice which increasingly crosses geographical and cultural borders in ways that make a focus on ‘national’ or local perspectives seem parochial. Thirdly, a progressive rethinking of multiculturalism in no way implies that the problematics of race and nation have been solved or have declined significantly in some way.

RACISM TODAY
Certainly, the shape of racism has significantly changed, but there is a danger that the project of rethinking multiculturalism in some way goes hand in hand with a percieved dramatic decline in racism. The problem with this perspective is that it fails to recognise the ability of contemporary racism to adapt and change to prevailing social conditions, where culture and religion rather than biology provides the cutting edge of exclusion based on difference.
The argument being advanced here is for a more sophisticated, complex and nuanced approach to understanding the role and legacy of multiculturalism in the visual arts. A more creative approach that evolves directly from cultural and artistic practice in a global context rather than the dictates of a national bureaucratic logic would enable us to reflect on and come to terms with the complex central role that cultural difference plays in the visual culture of Britiain. This is the real opportunity – the message in a bottle – that Yinka’s maginificent Fourth Plinth work presents.