Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
THE CURRENT art exhibition at the Pegasus Gallery is titled 'Happy Times'. It represents the output of Jeffrey Grant, a Jamaican graduate of the School of Art at the Edna Manley College and Omoruyi Otalor, a Nigerian for whom Jamaica has been home for the past four years. 'Happy Times' is a rather ironic title for an exhibition being mounted at this time in Jamaica when there is so much to be unhappy about. If it is true that artists draw inspiration from their environment, then the environment has been less than revealing about what inspired the title of the exhibition and the pieces which have been created to exemplify the theme.
There is nothing of joblessness, or blood and gore. Nothing of crime, debates about education or poverty. Omoruyi has concentrated on using bamboo on velvet to give us a glimpse of the Nigeria which makes him proud the Fulani milkmaid, fishermen, farmers, gong player. Jeffrey, working primarily in wood, has given us the best of the hibiscus, our athletes and sports heroes, family life.
The exhibition prompted me to remember the Nigerian story about the boy, who observing that his father was not around asked, "how come?" The subsequent attempts of the village to find an answer to the question led to a search for the father who had had a most unpleasant encounter while on a hunting trip. The father was happily returned to the village and the boy who had asked "how come" was handsomely rewarded for remembering the way it used to be.
VERY MUCH ALIVE
I had a chance to talk with the artists and to discover that they had found themselves in the position of the boy who asked "how come." They were very much alive to the once upon a time when we knew better and consequently did better than just about anything that we are doing today. It was their deliberate intention to remind us of those days and to encourage us to paint a world as we would like it to be and then bring it to life in the way we are, in our being on a daily basis.
That, incidentally, is what they do in Hollywood. They make movies about the great United States of America being attacked. Remember the movie Wolverine? That's when I first consciously took note of this little ploy. The attackers are made to look so depraved and the US such an innocent victim, that by the time the tables turn in the last reel you almost want to enter the screen and throw a few punches on behalf of the US. A long series of such movies later and along came 9/11. Go get 'em Uncle Sam! A grim reminder of how everything begins in the mind.
What if there had been a series of movies about man's humanity to man? What if Hollywood had dared to produce movies about the role of the USA in, let's say. the economic destitution and political misfortunes of Haiti? Maybe more people would have had an answer when America asked the world "why do they hate us so much?" after September 11.
EQUAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE
In the same way I believe 'Happy Times' can help us again to vision and create on the canvas of our lives a different reality. This response-ability to reflect the best of who we are and constantly remind us of possibilities and choices beyond those that we presently pursue, is a gift of the creative souls amongst us whose mission is to prevent us from totally cannibalising even when so much of what they do too often goes unnoticed and unrewarded.
It is the same spirit, impetus and vision that lead Worrell King and Clinton Hutton to encourage us as a people to look again at Peter Tosh and the pictures he painted in his songs about a society of equal rights and justice. It's the same spirit that led to the establishment of the band in Negril calling itself SANE, Sounds Against Negative Expressions. It is the desire to reclaim and live the better side of who we knew ourselves to be that manifested in the adoration of Miss Lou on her recent visit, appropriately coinciding with the Emancipation Celebrations.
All expressions of the desire for a self that needs to be emancipated into more space to express itself more physical space for practice, performance and exhibition, more space in the media space to reflect that it is there and in greater numbers and better quality than that which titillates without enlightening or uplifting but which provides its own morbid fascination.
And it needs a space in which it finds more support not just in the critical area of financial rewards, but in the arena where more people who share the vision step forward to display what's on their canvas or whatever medium in which they vision.
"Dreaming of a new Jamaica, a land of peace and love -
And all who believe in music, all who believe in love
Come and sing this song with me."
