- Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
Section of 'The Maroon Killer God's Garment for (S) Hero' by K. Khalfani Ra, while, at top, 'Unfixing the Fixed: The New Evolution', a tthree-panel work by Khepera Oluyia.
Myrtha Desulme, Contributor
THREE AFROCENTRIC Jamaican artists are presently paying tribute to the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution at Mutual Gallery.
This exhibition celebrates the historical feat without precedent, which gave Haiti its independence in 1804. The subject of Haiti has recurred as a plastic and thematic leitmotif in these artistes' work, as they have explored the concept of a collective historical destiny for Africans.
The extent to which this is a destiny deferred is to be measured by the almost wholesale failure of Black people to study and engage with the political, cultural, and philosophical lessons of the era, in a manner independent of the normative bias of the West.
In recognition of the vanguard role of art, that is, image making, in the process of evolution/revolution, Afrikan Space Program represents a departure from what they see as a tradition of failure.
K. Khalfani Ra, Khepera Oluiya Hatsheptwa and Akanni Ankhamun consider themselves brothers and sisters-in-arms. They met at the Edna Manley School of Arts, and were brought together by the gravitational pull of their like-mindedness.
They share a common cultural and political worldview, and the same commitment to contribute to a global revisionism movement, which is taking place among historians.
It is a movement in which Black people are given their rightful place at the centre of their own universe, and not on the fringes of the hegemonic discourse.
Hatsheptwa's central theme is the self, as it relates to the collective, and to the acceptance of self.
She examines the worldwide Black phobia, internalised self-hatred, and non-acceptance of Self. Her contention is that nothing can be accomplished by the African until he replaces the traditional self-stifling education with his own.
Her work is abstract, her symbolism powerful. It is a bid to create a new aesthetic language, which speaks to a certain political function, and to unfix fixed perceptions and mindsets, in order to bring about a new evolution. Her message is straightforward and expressed in a minimalist style.
She inserts scratches and tears into her work, to symbolise our need to tear our way to the inside of ourselves, in order to regain our ancestral consciousness.
She celebrates the Haitian Revolution, as the first to strike a blow for Africanness.
She studies the sociological term "Anomie" (social instability due to a lack of norms and values), where blacks, desiring to be white, take on alien norms, values, and aesthetic aspirations. She analyses Fanon's assertion that the black man's destiny is to be white, and concludes that black society is deviant.
She views it a crime not to accept Self, especially in light of the fact, that so many, from Hapshetsut to Garvey, through Dessalines and Toussaint, have come to show us the way.
RECLAIMING SELF
Ankhamun's central theme is our need to oppose external forces, in order to reclaim our African heritage. In Garvey's words, we are entitled to rule ourselves, and any philosophy that encourages us to look to another for leadership, will always enslave us. He has always focused on Haiti for inspiration, as a symbol of black triumph over white domination, and as a symbol of non-compromise on principle.
He remembers the blood that was shed, for the republic to come into existence. Ankhamun asserts that with blood we keep our women and children free.
He pays homage to Dessalines, who proclaimed Haiti's independence to the universe, re-established the delicate balance of justice, by giving Black people their autonomy, restored their dignity by establishing a sovereign nation, and became an inspiration to mankind.
His work is surrealistic, and his iconography includes vodun, and ancient African Kimetian symbols. These include Maat, the female goddess of Truth and Justice, represented by a feather or Anubis, the dog, symbols derived from African spiritual wisdom, to signify truth in the philosophical sense.
He portrays a haunting vision of a Black nation, emerging from a globe representing the Universe. It is a biblical, epic and holy vision, containing a dimension of eternity.
It is a vision of a dedicated, self-reliant people, reclaiming their heritage, proud of their liberty, and zealous to maintain it. Red, black and green, the colours that Garvey declared to have been found on the pyramids, are predominant in Ankhamun's work.
EXCAVATING HISTORY
Ra defines himself as an African Artist, as well as a visual anthropologist, excavating the crime called history, attacking the veneers, facades and surfaces.
He quotes Tolstoy, who declared history a compilation of lies.
He sees his role as an artiste as two-fold:
to make a proactive strike against aesthetic terrorism, by creating images, which assault western hegemony, and,
to be a visual grave digger, almost like a vodun Papa Legba, leading us to the spirit world.
He offers to be our path to communicate with the beyond. Ra uses Art as a metaphor for African spirituality, and declares the political, philosophical and spiritual force, Vodun, (which means spirit in the language of West Africa), as part of his process, his consciousness, his spirituality and his sensibility. He reminds us that vodun was the political, philosophical and spiritual facilitator, which made the Haitian revolution possible. Vodun contains an ideology, which Black people can live by, and create their own paradigm from. He uses the anti-inertia force of nails on canvas, to counter the inertia of the black race.
Ra analyses "bonapartism", as the reactionary force, which would return us to an oppressive hegemony, and uses blond hair as a symbol of the image of "the white God", which Boukman entreated us throw away. He makes a powerful commentary on the U.S. occupation of 1915, another imperialist pre-emptive attack, hiding behind the cloak of democracy, and celebrates the Caco resistance.
All of his pieces are mixed media wall hangings. In a study entitled The Maroon Killer God's Garment for a (S) Hero, created for Maroon leaders Sierras and Makandal, two akobens (abengs) represent praise and celebration. But the work also deplores that the Maroons capitulated their sovereignty, and signed a peace treaty when they were actually winning.
These three young artistes project a forceful and compelling vision. All of the works are multireferencial and multi-dimensional.
The exhibition will continue until February 20. Don't miss it!
