Opera singer Peter Brathwaite unveils black portraits exhibition

An opera singer says an exhibition that shows him reimagining historical black portraits is giving the people shown as “commodities” a voice.

Peter Brathwaite, from Bedford, has recreated famous paintings using household items and family heirlooms.

At first it was a bit of fun dress-up but “I realised there was a real appetite for learning about these images”, he said.

Rediscovering Black Portraiture is on display at The Higgins Bedford.

Brathwaite, who is an artist, writer and broadcaster, started the project during the first Covid-19 lockdown as part of the Getty Museum Challenge.

His opera credits include the role of narrator in the Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, by The Royal Opera and Little Bulb.

“I just wanted to dress-up, it felt a bit like being in an opera rehearsal,” he explained.

“After five [portraits] I realised that there was a real appetite for learning about these images.

“We don’t see them very often in museums, so I thought, this could be educational for myself and for the viewer.”

He said his version of The Paston Treasure, which is on display at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, includes West African printed clothes.

It also features a patchwork pillowcase sewn by his maternal Barbadian grandmother, afro haircare products and a suitcase that his family brought to the UK.

In the exhibition his belongings are placed in a glass case in front of a print of the artwork.

“I thought we could create this imagined museum, a gallery full of faces that you don’t usually see,” he said.

“There are many depictions of black individuals as commodities and that’s something that I wanted to interrogate and give these individuals agency when they didn’t have a voice in the original.

“We can’t walk in their shoes, but we can shed light on the stories of the people and see how they live on in us.”

Some of his belongings are placed among the museums permanent exhibits, including his multi-generational Caribbean black dolls.

“The dolls are meant to challenge this notion of black people as commodities, as property, where black Africans were deemed to be chattel.

“By placing these Caribbean dolls around the space, handmade by black women, it challenges the notion of who we see and don’t see.”

One was a “topsy turvy doll” that was “developed on plantations to teach enslaved children the hierarchies that existed”, he said.

“It’s scratching beneath the surface and looking at the stories that we don’t usually hear about,” he added.