© Rachel Garfield
Through her film and video portraits, Garfield explores the formation of subjectivity in relation to race, class and gender, as well as interrogating notions of authenticity and hierarchies of victim-hood. She examines racial identity and the concept of the stereotype, as well as the complexities of how visibility – what we ‘think we see’– affects our assumptions about who someone ‘is’. You’re Joking, Aren’t You? is a series of vignettes in which actor Wayne Atkinson describes, in varying modes of address, and in different guises and domestic settings, everyday encounters involving racial prejudice. The first, told whilst standing in the kitchen is reminiscent of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, and involves a lengthy rendition of a chance meeting with a child who uses a racial slur.
The subject of the second story is his engagement to a Portuguese woman whose belief it is that the African ‘dilemma’ (the extensive poverty and unrest associated with the myriad nations of the continent) is the fault of the Jewish people. The third vignette sees Atkinson standing in front of a red wall, describing seeing an ‘Eastern European beggar’ in London and being accosted by a black woman who confides in him her belief that the gypsies should be ‘sent back’ to where they came from. Garfield’s protagonist notes wryly to the camera that these would have been the same kinds of comments made about her parents when they first arrived in Britain. You’re Joking might also be seen as participating in a dialogue with Portrait of Jason, a 1967 documentary produced and directed by Shirley Clarke, featuring a gay, African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer, the film’s eponymous narrator.
