“Africa and India became the ‘great’ in Great Britain.”
–Marquise Mays, Movements of Black Life Program Leader
One statement made in class by the professor that resonated with me was the phrase, “The Great in Great Britain is Black and Brown people.”
So, my painting represents how, despite the United Kingdom’s attempts to change the narrative of why Black and Brown people came over, I’m trying to show that they are Great Britain.
My painting process involved buying a picture frame and painting on the glass of the Windrush boat. I painted the boat with the British flag, but the color scheme consists of the colors of the West African, Caribbean, and Indian flags.
The specific ethnicities that I based my colors on were Nigeria, Ghana, Punjab, Gujarat, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Grenada. Those colors are green, white, red, yellow, black, orange, light blue, and dark blue.
So, I decided to have my base be the Pan-African flag since it has red, black, and green, which are the main colors of the other flags. I then incorporated yellow, orange, dark blue, and light blue into the cross and smaller stripe parts of the British flag.
I added a wavy light blue line in the dark blue to try to make it look like the ocean, representing the waters they crossed to start a new life. Then, for the background, I created a black-and-white collage of historical Black and Indian figures.
There are some actors, actresses, rappers, activists, archivists, historians, newspapers, and other people in the background as well.
Lastly, I wanted to try to paint a statue falling off the ship to represent the statues being knocked down, but I ran out of time, so I had to scratch that idea. It would’ve represented the public disowning the colonial-era racism.
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“‘Great’ Britain” is part of a larger UWM Post special project titled “Movements of Black Life: A Comparative Study in the UK.”