‘“The subversive potential of being out of place” is really what it all comes down to with my work,’ London-based artist Rene Matić tells me, quoting feminist writer Sara Ahmed, during a recent studio visit. Encompassing photography, film, text, and installation, Matić’s deeply personal practice explores themes of identity, subculture, faith, and family. In the photographic series flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do (2018–ongoing), on show at Arcadia Missa as part of Art Basel Miami Beach’s Nova sector, Matić asks what it means to be British by directing their camera at club nights, drag performers caught off-guard backstage, political graffiti on council estates, flowers honoring the Queen’s death, and intimate portraits of friends and family.

At the heart of Matić’s narrative is an exploration of the rude boy youth culture movement, which emerged in a newly-independent Jamaica in 1962. Originating in poverty and unemployment, this movement would be a pivotal influence on skinheads, who embraced working-class mod fashion and Jamaican music genres such as ska and reggae. Their ‘rude’-ness was a pose of political defiance, an affirmation of Black identity against the backdrop of systemic oppression and a refusal to conform to societal expectations that sought to marginalize their cultural expression.

‘My dad is a Black skinhead and I was brought up in a mixed-race household,’ Matić tells me. ‘It feels like I’m coming from a place that’s already in between.’ Born in Peterborough, Matić moved to London to study art, graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2020. There’s a complex duality in skinhead culture characterized by far-right political tendencies juxtaposed with influences drawn from the rude boy movement. Matić navigates this in-between space by incorporating intimate narratives that challenge oppressive ideologies with love rather than fear. ‘That’s why I’ve got “Born British, Die British” tattooed on my back,’ they say. The artist engages with the body as a framework to underpin humanity’s cultural, political, and familial complexities and traumas.

Every image in the series serves as a tribute to life, dance, and spaces that prove indispensable for othered communities. Yet, beneath this conviviality exists an awareness of the inherent tensions within the photographic medium and the act of looking, with Matić recognizing the potential for both harm and celebration to coexist. The artist’s exploration is a quest for self within the liminal spaces, aiming to find utopia in moments that challenge the status quo.

Rene Matić is represented by Arcadia Missa (London). Their work will be on view in the Nova sector at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Sofia Hallström is a writer and artist based in London.

Published on November 30, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: Photographs by Rene Matić. Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London. 1. Kai’s Birthday Party, 2022. 2. Aries dancing at HOWL, 2023.