No Police At Pride by Nat White

During my visit to the Arquives, I looked at pictures from Toronto Pride in the 1980s. In many of these, behind the smiling attendees, were frowning police officers. These officers looked very out of place in the happy, colourful setting with their serious expressions and starched uniforms.

My piece "No Police At Pride" was inspired by these photos as well as current ACAB street art in the United States. Another source of inspiration came from Gay Shame's "Five-O Out of Pride 50" project recommended to me by Rachel Corbman. Further inspiration was also drawn from the Netflix series “Arcane” as well as street art culture and the New School tattoo genre.

This first idea behind this work is a criticism of the presence of uniformed police officers at Pride. It deals with themes of police corruption, accountability, and surveillance. The traditional police slogan “Protect and Serve” has been covered up by the slogan “Murder and Deny” to represent the constant lack of accountability and justice in the police system when a member of the public is killed by an officer, particularly when that individual is queer or BIPOC. For this same purpose, blood has been added to one of the officer’s hands. Finally, surveillance is represented by the symbolic crossing out of the officers’ eyes as well at the sneaky inclusion of the pop-culture symbol “Kilroy” to represent the idea of “Big Brother”.

The second idea behind this work was queer activism. The goal was to make this work look like a mural which supported police officers but was later defaced by graffiti and queer symbolism in opposition to the original mural’s message. To this end, I have included queer rights slogans and pride flags at well as the hashtag “NoPoliceAtPride” to represent what queer individuals might tag on this mural if they were to come upon it.

I would like to note that while this work opposes the presence of police at pride, it in no way condones violence against uniformed police officers in these settings. Rather it promotes more passive resistance such as defacing murals.

For fun, I have also included a timelapse of the creation of this work.