I suppose photography is probably what people best know me for, however, I would rather call it imaging. I am not a professionally trained photographer, that word has always been a bit spooky to me, so I tend to say I’m interested in imaging things, whether it be through writing, video or sculpture.
Growing up I wasn’t the most academic kid, but I still loved history and research, and taking images was somehow a language that felt most accessible and enjoyable to me. Therefore this idea of creating archives became an incredibly important and exciting learning tool for me. I was a Tumblr kid so I guess subconsciously I grew into imagining my own version of archives: taking photos of friends and family not knowing exactly why I was doing it.
Through exhibiting my work I came to understand what it is: a love letter to England in a way. My England that exists outside of everything. It’s sort of its own world, a utopia. But yes, finding my way to it was a kind of happy accident, if you will.
To be honest, I don’t think that a safe space really exists anywhere. I do think that love can do a lot of the work of keeping oneself safe. But this is something that I am constantly thinking about, especially now that the audience is growing. Especially showing in so many different countries has really made me think about the responsibility of protecting this utopia that I’ve created, the culture, the country. Especially because I cannot control the gaze. This is also why I enjoy this secret coding within the work I produce, it’s like a secret language that has a huge power to it and allows for this opacity within my work. But yes, when the audience grows and more people get to know my work, it does compromise the intention, and I do feel I have less and less control over the safety of the images, the safety of my subjects. So it is difficult, and I think I photograph fewer things than I ever have before. That is also because I am growing up, my friends are growing up and we are having less and less alone time together, and I do believe that alone time is so precious it should be kept as that since whenever a camera is present within that space it feels that we are constantly surveyed. It’s a huge back and forth for me between “I want to show us, there are gaps in the archive, we deserve to be seen” to then thinking “You know what, actually fuck that, we deserve to go under the radar and keep that sort of radicality of underground subculture.” Because once something is seen, it can be taken advantage of. So it’s a balancing act.
I feel completely contradicting as a photographer who wants to be unsurveiled, and I’m moving slowly into figuring out how I can do that while still being able to take photos. It’s definitely a practice that will go on forever, as the world changes, as the queer communities change, as what we need changes.
I think it’s a bit of both. I used to carry my fucking camera around with me at all times because I felt there was such an abundance of energy and I didn’t want to miss any of it. But after my book Flags for Countries that Don’t Exist but Bodies That Do came out in 2021, it all got a bit overwhelming and I had to give myself, and my friends, a break. The camera became like a friend within our friendship group, and as much as that is really special, it also became something different. This new consciousness arose, sort of like “If Rene is taking a picture of me this might end up on the walls of Tate.”
As much as I love it and I love archiving every single one of my friends as the icons they are, there does need to be some rest. So nowadays, I do ask myself “Is tonight the night I’m taking my camera with me?” which actually means: am I at work or am I not? This distinction is also really important for my own headspace in order to be present. For example, I went to my grandfather’s funeral recently, and I took my camera with me, which at the moment felt so important to me. Sort of this idea of the camera as a friend, and at that moment I really needed that friend. As my practice matures, I’m becoming more aware of what spaces I enjoy bringing that friend into.
I think rudeness changes every day, in every circumstance. It’s essentially inspired by the Jamaican rudeboy subculture–the energy of purposefully existing outside–that I deeply know and love. But it also came to be from my own positionality, of constantly being in between so many spaces, as a mixed-race person, especially as a non-binary person. The idea of being rude, and interrupting by accident and then embracing it and using it as a tool to survive. Sarah Ahmed talks about “ruining the dinner party,” bell hooks talks about “talking back,” to me this is the same energy.
To me, that rude centre is really important, and I am constantly returning to it. It has this kind of child-like naivete in it, that I never want to lose because I believe you get a lot done when you’re naive. As the practice matures and I mature, I always want to circle back to this rudeness and remain in that spot of self-aware and unafraidness. I do think a lot of skill goes into being rude, and it’s something I’m constantly practising because a lot of it has to do with anger. Anger is very scary to me–I have been very angry in my life, and I realised it hurts me more than anything else. I think the work is learning how to navigate that, how to remain angry, but how to use it for something productive. Allowing myself this rudeness and in-betweenness, is my way of doing the work, my way of getting comfy with it.
It is really difficult in the society we live in, and that’s why those active decisions of leaving the camera at home or vice versa are so necessary. I do feel like my practice has always been about pleasure, the same way it has always been about love. That is also how I try to implement it into my practice and into my life really, by immersing myself in love, whether it be platonic or romantic relationships. I really value good human relationships. I was speaking to my friend the other day, and we were discussing what subculture means now, and wondering if or what subculture we are a part of since we don’t dress the same, we don’t listen to the same music and so on. We came to a conclusion that the subculture we have access to, is friendship. What we actually have in common is deep pleasure and love, and that’s our way of surviving the different oppressions we all face. That is a vein that permeates my own practice as well, from start to finish.
That for me is imperative, in order to save my own life. When I first started making my work it was always, and still is, in retaliation to violence, oppression, and all of that negativity that comes our way. But I cannot hone all of that within me–so how do I alleviate, how do I respond to it, react to it, and live within it? I truly believe love is the answer. Love is extremely complicated, but that’s okay–realising that was a real turning point for me when I was younger, understanding that “fuck, I need to survive this, and I’m not going to be able to if I don’t find a way through it.”
It has been absolutely incredible! Oscar had seen my work at South London Gallery, and the curators in Vienna wanted to do a two-person show, so he proposed to do it together, which is a bless, doing a show with a Turner prize-winning artist at this stage of my career is incredible. One of the brilliant things about the show, which is scary but so necessary, is the fact that it doesn’t translate through imagery, and you really have to be in the physical space to experience it. I think that felt like quite a triumph for both of us, and really acts as a testament to both our work and our relationship–a world has been created, and you have to be there to experience it.
The collaboration grew really organically, through many conversations we realized that as much as me and Oscar are worlds apart, we are actually really similar. Both of our work is incredibly loving and tender, but also really aggressive, and have this punk attitude to it. I absolutely love abstract expressionism, I can’t fucking do it in paint to save my life, but I guess I try to do it in other mediums. Working with Oscar was really easy because we immediately loved each other. I wanted to give an ode to Josephine Baker and her performance in Vienna in 1929 and the outrage that followed. I was especially intrigued by the church bells, and Oscar and I both researched catholicism as a starting point for the show. From there on we kind of did this dance together, working a lot individually, but the outcome is this really special symbiosis, that really plays on all of your senses. It really has been such a beautiful way of working and the beginning of an incredible friendship. I think the exhibition really showcases that.
To be honest, I’d want people to be grateful. Not grateful in a righteous way, but grateful for the generosity and the love that exists within that space, grateful for themselves, and the people around them and hopefully take that with them to the world. Most of all I want people to be loved. Hopefully my work and the generosity in it will, in a small way, do that for them, if they allow it to happen. Not to sound too spiritual, but there is a bit of mystique and magic in the way I think about things. I guess that’s that kind of Afrofuturism moment, a wish. A dream.
Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is an artist and writer currently residing in London. Their artistic pursuits traverse the realms of photography, film, and sculpture, coalescing in what they term as “rude(ness),” a concept that signifies both an acknowledgement and reverence for the liminal spaces. Matić’s creative impetus draws deeply from the realms of dance and music, notably the movements of Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone. These influences serve as vehicles for exploring the intricate interplay between West Indian and white working-class cultures in Britain. Moreover, Matić foregrounds queer intimacies, partnerships, and pleasures as not only subjects of exploration but also as essential modalities of resilience and survival within their artistic practice.
