Steve McQueen

The video installation Sunshine State (2022) consists of three elements: close-ups of a burning sun, excerpts from the film The Jazz Singer (1927) and McQueen's own voice. In a thirty-minute loop, the work confronts the viewer with themes such as identity, stereotyping and racism, interwoven with a personal family history.

The film opens with a bright sun, which warms and burns. McQueen's voice whispers: ‘Shine on me, Sunshine State, shine on me.’ He talks about his father Philbert, who came to Florida from Grenada in the 1950s to work as an orange picker. There he was the victim of a racist attack. McQueen repeats the story several times; with each repetition, words disappear. What remains are silences and fragments of memories. The trauma remains palpable, but also becomes a silent force: ‘not holding back, but holding tight.’

McQueen contrasts this with excerpts from The Jazz Singer, the first film with spoken dialogue. The main character, Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), wants to make a career on Broadway and performs in blackface, as Jolson did in real life. McQueen shows the images in negative, slowed down, sped up or backwards. Black becomes white and white becomes black; the make-up turns into a ghostly mask. Jolson's face dissolves into an elusive apparition.

In the exhibition space, the same scenes appear on two screens, in different edits and slightly out of sync. The result is a sensory experience that allows us to feel the impact of a poignant personal history on how we are shaped as human beings and how we perceive others.