A Blood-Stained Coronation.
Nadra Abdi
One enters a room and history follows; one enters a room and history precedes. History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives. Where one stands in a society seems always related to this historical experience. Where one can be observed is relative to that history. All human effort seems to emanate from this door. (Dionne Brand, A Map to The Door of No Return.)
The recently uncovered portrait of King Charles III, painted by Jonathan Yeo, immediately raises questions about the role of monarchy in the “post” colonial world. As King Charles' portrait is unveiled to the world, he stands erect and stern, adorned in imperial glory, with a fluttering butterfly to his right and a faint smile softly brushed upon a face that represents the bloody legacy of British colonialism. Adorned in outsourced jewels and ornaments, the red stained canvas makes the expedient objective of monarchical rule splintering clear despite the symbolic attempt for metamorphosis. Like a thorn in our side, King Charles’ hubristic countenance toward his “subjects” functions as a continuous, successive wound, sutured by the perpetual lineage of the ruling family.
At first glance, the portrait adheres to the long-standing conventions of royal portraiture. However, rather than a structured and familiar framing, the artist envelops King Charles in a canvas smeared with repetitive strokes of red paint, containing his figure to be embraced in the entrenching miasmic aura of British colonial rule. King Charles’ portrait makes plain the convergence of the looted power and subjugation from the royal lineage, highlighting the intimacy of history with the scandal and overbearing excess of imperial privilege.
The iconography of the royals has long been crafted in isolation from the tumultuous realities of history, detached from the revolutions, wars, and struggles that shaped the lives of the common people. In a time marked by genocide(s) and enforced brutalities in Congo, Palestine, Sudan and elsewhere —often facilitated by so-called 'peacekeeping countries'— this portrait graces us with a barbarous charm, its callous elegance masking the horrors it symbolically overlooks both then and now. As the unravelling of royal portraiture continues to be a modern conception that is yet to be rendered an archive of the past, it is fair to ask what their status is beyond their initial symbolic function as representations of monarchical power.
What is the purpose of revisiting a portrait revealed at the start of the year? Why bring to light the dormant wounds of history for the sake of a king's portrait? Why reawaken the colonial narrative that feeds imperial impulses, buried beneath layers of forced collective amnesia? Why open that door of history? Given all this, why allow ourselves to forget what courses through our veins? As lived realities? While people live under the repercussions of a bygone ruling presence.
Just this month, in Australia — a country that is still a constitutional monarchy —King Charles was confronted by indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe’s mutinous proclamations. The deafening venue was bellowing loudly with her words as she shouted:
"You are not our King. You are not Sovereign. Give us back our land! You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us - our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land.”
As Thorpe courageously lambasted the King, she showed me what Fred Moten so poetically captures as “not mere words of vengeance but vengeance of words on the move” in Black and Blur. Protest of this kind reveal to us the fertile nature of resistance, that we are (re)born into a history and not into a void. History’s shadow remains to be at the heel of our every step while refusing cessation. When Brand said “history is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives,” I imagine the empty room that they entered upon, ululated at the presence of Thorpe, though no one else heared it— not even the King, who was seated right next to it.
Still, colonial tenacity persists in the portrayal of King Charles, revealing the complexities of historical narratives intertwined with power. This portrait is not some mere symbol of monarchy; it evokes the indivisible connection between historical redress and the ongoing impacts of colonialism from the proscenium of British legacy at home, all the way to the Commonwealth realm. The legacy of this once murderous enterprise pulses through contemporary societies with virulent vigour, compelling us to confront the scars left by a past that continues to influence through usurped sovereignty and power. As we engage with these visual narratives, we must ask ourselves why we allow such significant histories to fade into the room of collective amnesia. It is crucial to remember what courses through us like blood, challenging the structures that seek to clot the brutality of history and affirming the need for acknowledgment and redress in our present, even as they paint it in red.