Issue 62 — Summer 2024

'As a girl, then woman, and eventually a mother in the Caribbean diaspora in London, I learnt from my grandma Umilta that one way to cheer a fractious baby was to dance and repeat, child on hip, ‘a-ping pang pang…’, an imitation of the sound of a steel pan. My cousins and siblings delighted in the rowdy faraway fragment of the steel pan sung for us, but knew too the losses and longing it voiced.’

So writes curator Dominique Heyse-Moore in her essay ‘Pang Pang’, which explores both her own private family history, and Alvaro Barrington’s Tate Britain commission, Grace – a monumental reimagining of Black culture and aspirational attitudes. Grace is, as Barrington has said, a tribute to his own personal graces – his grandmother, mother, and sister – who ‘showed up gracefully’. It is also a dedication to carnival – and to the transgressive, emancipatory power of carnival traditions across the Caribbean and worldwide. Rain falls on a tin roof, music echoes, light shines through in a variety of colours, and a dancer – grace embodied – emerges from a sea of steel pans.

This issue of Tate Etc. is dedicated to that commission, with a range of features expanding on and reflecting its message. The spirit of carnival can be found across Tate this summer: in Zanele Muholi’s breathtaking exhibition, and photographs which ‘break the surface’ of all our lives; in Oscar Murillo’s new project, The flooded garden, an immense participatory work opening soon at Tate Modern; and in Beatriz Milhazes’ exhibition Maresias at Tate St Ives.

Welcome to summer,

Tate Etc.