Visualising Balance, Balancing Visualities: Race, Epistemology and Equality in Visual Culture

Abstract: This thesis is based on my interpretation of three particular visual examples that were created in relation to the racial tensions that were occurring at the time of their production. My visual examples are (1) the 2016 campaign advert commissioned by Operation Black vote (2) The music video I’m not Racist by the American rapper Joyner Lucas relaesed in 2017 (3) Sir Davey’s Proclamation Board to the Aborigines 1816 which circulated around 1850-1888. These images were created with the intention of addressing racial tensions, they can be labelled as didactic images, as they offer the viewer a means of taking responsibility and action regarding the respective event or tension. Using the proclamation board as a historic example I analyse the symbols in all three images and question how a visuality addressing racism uses the same narratives as a colonial image. I question how these symbols work to keep definitions and understanding of race and racism within narrow margins that are defined by a whiteness that is believed to be objective. Using Black Feminist Thought as a methodology I also question how can we create a visuality that attempts to represent racism without the epistemology or ontology of a racialised person? How does this reproduce historical representation of racial tensions? How does this visuality work to centre or de-centre the position of a white subjectivity? How does epistemology work for or against the creation of this visuality?