FANON Now - On The Legacy Of Mirage Enigmas Of Race, Difference & Desire

In 1995 ICF’s Creative Director David A Bailey curated the exhibition Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference & Desire at the ICA in collaboration with Iniva. This landmark project marked a moment of considering the importance of Franz Fanon and ways in which his writings on post-colonialism, identity, cinema and psychoanalysis intertwined with artistic practices and race.

Research into the legacy of this project has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council England and part of that research involved a discussion event held at Live Art Development Agency on 1 October 2015 with artists from the original Mirage project and artists from subsequent generations, in order to reflect on the contemporary moment in relation to structural violence, de-colonising culture and relations, and the power of aesthetics and its explorations of complex formations of racial identities.

This became a timely opportunity to look back at Mirage and review the present and future conditions in relation to the thematic structure set up by the original project.