Life as a Black Woman in Great Britain: Olivia Sterling's »Really Rough Scrubbing Brush«

Goldsmiths College is known as a station for many representatives of the first generation of Young British Artists and has been hosting exhibitions at the new CCA since 2018. As part of the Episodes solo exhibition series, an exhibition by English artist Olivia Sterling, born in 1996, can be explored, whose title, »Really Rough Scrubbing Brush«, already hints at the coarse, unpleasant undertone of the works created this year.

Despite the innocuous-seeming, everyday situations and happy events like pool parties, rendered in a cartoonish painting style, the reality of racism in the present is quickly revealed. Sterling explicitly references her experiences as a black woman in Britain, racism that seems inconspicuous and often goes unnoticed by those not affected. Sterling also seems to reflect a new social radicalization: In some of her work, letters like »B« and »W« accompany painted hands of different skin colors. In earlier paintings, white people's hands were often marked with »P« for pink, while in more recent ones they are usually marked with »W«, which stands for pure white and was previously assigned to white objects by Sterling.

Sterling received her master's degree from the Royal College of Art in 2020 and already has several group and solo exhibitions to her credit. This exhibition at the CCA should be an exciting glimpse into the current work of a painter to watch over the next few years.