Title: Stop & Search

Artist: Kazvare Made It

Artwork Description: This work reconfigures archival and contemporary texts to examine the racialised priorities of policing in the United Kingdom. In the foreground, Kazvare’s text reads: “For all the vim with which they stop and search Black boys, it’s mad that they couldn’t keep the same energy and stop and search for one.” In the background, archival text from A History of Police in England (1901) by Captain W. L. Melville Lee reflects on policing as a system of order, legitimacy, and public approval. It describes the police as a force that must appear impartial, efficient, and “popular,” operating with minimal interference while maintaining authority and control. The work is made in reference to Richard Okorogheye, whose disappearance and death in 2021 exposed the uneven urgency with which Black lives are responded to by state institutions.By placing contemporary voice against this archival framing of policing, the work traces continuities in how authority is justified and perceived. It links everyday practices of stop and search to longer histories of surveillance, regulation, and uneven protection, foregrounding the gap between rhetoric of impartiality and lived experience.

Medium: Printed as giclée prints on 100% cotton rag paper.

Size: A2