The Weekend With Rene Matic

“I’d take myself to the new V&A East, newly opened and already alive with questions. The current shows – Why We Make and The Music Is Black – are both worth time, but the latter feels especially close. I was commissioned to respond to it, and my piece Heard sits just outside the exhibition, there’s also a photograph of mine within it. Even after multiple visits, it keeps unfolding– there’s always more to notice, more to sit with. Jacqueline Springer’s curation is sharp, generous, and deeply considered.”

“I always have a million books on the go– one for love, one for poetry, one for healing, one for theory, one for images, one for story. They sit open at different points in my life, waiting for the version of me that needs them. The one I keep returning to right now is I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings by Robert Rauschenberg, edited by Francine Snyder. It’s mostly handwritten notes from a brilliant, restless mind – messy and precise at once. I return to it when I need permission: to not finish the thought, to not polish the sentence, to let something be both unfinished and exact.”

“Gotta be Plentiful: Vegan Jamaican Recipes to Repeat by my girl Denai Moore. I’m not the most instinctive cook so this has taught me how to be a little braver. It’s full of life and colour and flavour and love and community. I’ve had the pleasure of tasting food cooked by Denai and I have been dreaming of it ever since. Ten out of ten!”

“I can’t believe it took me this long to watch Master of None Presents: Moments in Love. It’s a quiet, deeply attentive love story, held within a Black lesbian lens. There’s something about the way Lena Waithe and Naomi Ackie move through each other – tender, awkward, real – that lingers. It’s less about grand declarations and more about the texture of loving someone over time.”