Content Warning: This article is about the Southall Black Sisters, an organisation supporting survivors of sexual and domestic violence, and therefore contains discussion of topics that may be distressing.
As you come through the side entrance for the screening of Sisters! (2011), you’ll be abruptly transported into an intimate, dimly lit conference room. The exhibition takes up a slice of the Fruitmarket warehouse, accentuated by a luscious, red velvet carpet lying under a single line of chairs and a projection screen. Next to it, you’ll find a reading table with a lavish provision of reading materials and notes to accommodate your experience. The boundary between the viewer and the film itself is a mise-en-scéne of exposure and togetherness as the seating space, splayed with blankets for hospitality, warmly invites us to witness the candid, yet powerful scenes primarily set in the white-lit Southall Black Sisters (SBS) office.
The camera deliberately lingers on the mundane: quietly juxtaposing the workers’ professional and measured calm with explicit descriptions of sexual violence and racism. A “Self Care and Support” Guide, produced by University of Edinburgh students, reminds us to take pauses and reflect throughout the film as we overhear and sit through their phone calls and meetings with individual clients and policy makers, addressing these issues. This eavesdropping spectatorship, I think, powerfully represents the reality of domestic abuse. It faithfully grips on the unseen, self-reported struggles of Black and migrant women, which not only reflects SBS’ empowering activism, but illuminates their underlying strength to enable empowerment rather than helplessness.
Petra Bauer makes the point that the everyday activities of SBS workers are equally as important as the political work they put out. Because what unfolds through the mundanity is the resilient force of human compassion – in chasing freedom and justice for those voices that are systematically overlooked.
“Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh” by Stefan Schäfer, Lich is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.