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Kyra Mancktelow
No Blak in the Union Jack, 2023ink transfer on Hahnemühle paper80 x 120 cm / 95 x 136.5 cm (framed)unique series of 8Kyra Mancktelow’s work Ain’t no Blak in the Union Jack takes its title from British Academic Paul Gilroy’s book ‘There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics...Kyra Mancktelow’s work Ain’t no Blak in the Union Jack takes its title from British Academic Paul Gilroy’s book ‘There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation’.
Written in 1987, Gilroy’s book is a powerful indictment of then current attitudes to race in Great Britain. The author accused British intellectuals and politicians on both sides of the political divide of refusing to take race seriously.
Kyra’s unique ink print of the Union Jack continues this racial discourse visually. By recreating the Union Jack by hand and dipping it in black ink, Kyra puts blakness into the flag through her lived experience under colonial rule. The result is a transfer of ink and conceptual ideas, creating an image that stages stark encounters between emblems of colonialism and Indigenous cultural resistance.
