Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark

Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark’s Note Bene (2021) stands as a towering act of remembrance and resistance, powerfully resonating with the themes of The Handmaid’s Tale exhibition in Amsterdam, which confronts the gender gap in the arts and the ongoing erasure of women’s voices. Created in the wake of the UK’s final COVID-19 lockdown easing on 19 July 2021, Note Bene, a six-foot Black Power Fist, insists that while many yearned for a return to ‘normal’, the struggle for racial justice and equity, particularly for Black women, must not be forgotten. The work recalls the global uprising following the murder of George Floyd and reasserts the clenched fist as a historical gesture of solidarity, resistance, and empowerment. Within the exhibition’s context, D’Clark’s piece highlights how gendered and racialised bodies continue to be silenced, while calling attention to the urgent need for visibility, memory, and justice across all oppressed communities.