Regé-Jean Page Instagram – We’ve been invited to exhibit this as part of The Battersea Arts Centre’s Autumn season: ‘Make/Love’. I’ve never been part of an exhibition before. Never really thought I would. But art eh? . . . I’d planned to write something uplifting about community and the redeeming nature of seeking love to announce the piece, but this whole last week… it’s been tricky to find those words. I’m thankful to be in the business of making images that are more eloquent. And very proud of this one. . . . This last week – this last summer, this last century… the ‘exhibition’ of Black pain and grief has been harnessed and exploited on our streets and TV screens, but it’s a stolen and uncommissioned exhibit. It’s a collection of disrespected and goaded pictures. Callously distorted. Last week, when that drywall finally got justice and Breonna did not, Reuters headlined a video of Black folks literally hugging and crying in the streets as “Tempers Flare in Louisville”. This week the ‘solution’ to ‘race’ – to people like me existing and hurting – is yelling ’law and order’. Pointing more guns, putting more people in shackles. I genuinely can’t imagine how you’re meant to survive the amount of self policing necessary to live in a society that sees you through that lens with your humanity intact. But my job is to assure you, we do. . . . Lanre and I made a film this summer, reporting through our own very personal lens, how we seek the light when it seems darkest. How in those moments when there seems no safe harbour for tenderness and grief, it is possible to find the strength to dance and love and celebrate your own life. How there is not weakness, but indeed immense strength to be found in retaining the freedom to do that. And how there is world shaking power in finding the purpose to use it. . . . Lots of my friends, family and favourite people came together for no reason other than to share their light on this one, and we’ll be glad to hold up what we made with it all come November – when we’ll need to hold each other’s hearts and fists equally high, and when it will indeed be darkest; right before… . . . 📸 @helenmurraypix #MakeLove2020 #DontWaitFilm