Rene Matić was born to an English mother and Irish-St Lucian father in Peterborough, England in 1997, graduating in Fine Art from Central St Martins in 2020. In her work, Matić delves into their personal identity and experiences as a queer mixed-race individual from the Black British diaspora, exploring and challenging ideologies associated with Britishness, nationalism, and blackness. Matić's artistic approach is multidisciplinary, encompassing photography, textile, film, and prose.
Artist Rene Matić was born to an English mother and Irish-St Lucian father in Peterborough, England in 1997. Aged 18, Matić moved to London to study Fashion Design. However, they soon discovered their stronger affinity towards fine art and enrolled instead at Central Saint Martins (UAL), graduating in 2020. Informed by glitch feminism and subcultural theory, Matić delves into their personal identity and experiences as a queer mixed-race individual from the Black British diaspora, scrutinising social frameworks and ideologies associated with Britishness, nationalism, and blackness. Their artistic approach is multidisciplinary, encompassing photography, textile, film, and prose, through which Matić investigates the complex and frequently contradictory history of Britain concerning race, from the postwar period to the present day.
Matić's 2019 video, Brown Girl in the Art World III (Arts Council Collection), exemplifies their interest in exploring the dynamics of the White gaze. In the piece, Matić dances in slow motion outside a Skegness pub, capturing the inner tension of Black and White mixed-race identity within one body. Their work frequently draws on dance styles rooted in the Black British diaspora, including northern soul and ska, as well as LGBTQ+ dance cultures. Through these dance movements, Matić brings to life the diverse, sometimes conflicting, facets of their identity. She explained that the integration of dance into their work was an attempt 'to image the conflict between my blackness and my whiteness. Dancing alone looks and feels like a fight with the self; the body becomes in discussion with itself and the space that it’s in' (Mills 2021).
Matić held their first solo show, Flags for Countries that Don’t Exist but Bodies that Do, at Arcadia Missa, London in 2021, which showcased photographs later published in a book under the same title. The images featured a range of subjects, from council estates and seaside towns to political graffiti, as well as intimate portraits of Matić's friends and family – both those tied by blood and those they have elected to share their life with. Through these images, Matić offered an intense and poignant celebration of an urban community that epitomised diversity and vulnerability. According to Matić, the photos conveyed an 'overwhelming sense of love, intimacy and community' (cited in Prowse 2021). While the photos spanned various locations in England, they did not serve as a tribute to this nation specifically. As Hannah Black noted in her introduction to the book, Matić's depiction of London, and by extension England, was starkly unsentimental, characterised by an 'all drab brick and interior' presentation (Arcadia Missa). Among the portraits was one of Maggie, the artist's wife (2019, Government Art Collection), captured indulging in the sheer pleasure of wearing a pink silk kimono, a sentiment emphasised by the audacious phrase 'I didn't ask your opinion' visible on their handbag.
In their solo exhibition at the VITRINE Gallery, London, Born British, Die British (2021), Matić delved into their experience of being part of the Black British diaspora and into the historical violence perpetrated against Black and Brown bodies under the mantle of 'Great' Britain, an issue that continues to be relevant. For the exhibition, they had the phrase 'Born British, Die British' tattooed across their back by Lal Hardy, a prominent figure in the punk and skinhead scene since 1979. This moment was captured by British photographer Derek Ridgers and displayed with the title Destination / Departure (2020). Taking ownership of this body marking, Matić highlighted and embraced their skin as 'a subversive surface'. This act challenged and redefined the meaning of being born British and dying British in the contemporary multicultural landscape of Britain (Mills 2021). Matić's solo exhibition upon this rock, showcased at the South London Gallery in 2022, presented the artist's enduring examination of 'Britishness', studying how the nation's history influences its present. The works explored the effects of family histories across generations, establishing a conversation between subculture and spirituality. The show featured Matić's film Many Rivers (2022), which presented the story of their father, Paul, a onetime black skinhead, as a means to meditate on diaspora and the reality of growing up as mixed-race in 1960s Britain. The narrative unfolded through four perspectives: those of Paul; Matić’s mother, Ali; their grandfather, Julien; and their aunt, Lulu. Matić pointed out that 'I have found home in my dad’s skinhead roots, because once upon a time, identifying as a skinhead represented unity between Caribbean and British culture' (quoted in Sherwin 2022). In the same year, the Martin Parr Foundation commissioned Matić to create a new body of photographic work in Bristol. Matić produced an intimate portrayal of their friend Travis Alabanza, a writer, performer, and theatre maker based in Bristol, the photographs combining a variety of portraits with still-life images recording the evolution of Rene and Travis's friendship.
In the UK public domain, Matić’s work is represented in the Tate Collection, London and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, among other institutions.