Omari Ra - Reconstruction: legbara in space
DR. EDDIE Chambers is curator of the exhibition Curator's Eye II, Identity and History: Personal and Social Narratives in Art. The exhibition is currently on show at the National Gallery. Here he discusses his work with Dr. Jonathan Greenland, executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Jonathan Greenland: How would you describe the theme of this exhibition for a lay person?
Eddie Chambers: This exhibition explores the many ways in which Jamaican artists engage with and interpret Jamaica's history and their place within it. Of course, some viewers might be of the opinion that the theme of the exhibition applies to some artists more than others. But it was very important to me that it wasn't overly didactic. I hoped to keep the messages of the work open. Two good examples are Shosana Fagan and Tricia Gordon-Johnston. I see them as artists whose work has no single, explicit 'meaning' or 'idea', rather, their work is particularly open-ended in its readings.
With Tricia's work, its redness is strongly symbolic, to me at least, of blood and that can evoke the violent history of Jamaica. Or maybe it is menstruation. In many ways the overwhelming redness could refer to either a womb or a wound.
Now, with Shosana, I see her as disrupting our comfortable notions of domesticity. She has these sheets strung out across the Gallery like laundry, but they are blackened, defaced and torn. Sheets remind me of bed and healing and rest, love and sleep ...
JG: And privacy ...
EC: Yes, but she drives a coach and horses through all that! There is almost a suggestion of violence tied up in the work. The sheets look abused or burnt.
JG: Do you think it is a feminist work?
EC: I think the feminist leanings are very strong. The sheets are covered in text but they're not legible. They evoke the sense of voices not being heard, experiences not being acknowledged. There is - again, at least to me - great violence in the work; it makes me think of victims of violence.
Then there are Keisha Castello's works: these hybrid creatures displayed in cases all along the wall. I see them as a metaphor for Caribbean hydridity in visual form. Maybe they are a play on the motto 'Out of Many One People' as the pieces comprise so many different elements and forms. And although the artist has just recently made the work, they look like they were dug up like that!
JG: Do you think you are projecting this theme onto the different works? There are many artists around the world working in similar forms and they are not necessarily reflecting the Jamaican experience.
EC: Maybe I am. But this is the job of the curator: to interpret. Like an art historian. This is not the only and absolute interpretation of the work. In fact, I dislike the idea of the art historian as being something like a dispassionate librarian or authority. For one thing it causes all sorts of problems when 'Curators' are considered to be the arbiters of truth. It has a false implication of objectivity which I don't think the term 'art history' necessarily carries. As a curator I want, first and foremost, for viewers to know that what I'm presenting is my opinion and should not be seen as carrying any sort of factual objectivity.
JG: What other links do you see between the works in this exhibition?
EC: There are many cross references: one strong visual link is that iconic image of the slave ship. You see it repeated in many different ways in Charles Campbell's work and Christopher Clare's and also K. Khalfani Ra's.
JG: How does the work of those particular artists relate to your theme?
EC: It's clear from looking at the titles of the work in the exhibition by K. Khalfani Ra that he's keen, even anxious, to intervene into Jamaica's history and pass highly opinionated, perhaps even highly contentious, commentary on that history. First and foremost, I see his very distinctive use of nails as a powerful, yet surprisingly open-ended symbolism: nails as a symbol of suffering and pain and violence on the one hand; nails as a symbol of creativity, construction, production on the other hand. The nails in his work remind me in particular of slaves, packed into the holds and decks of slave ships. This is profound work by an artist clearly committed to engaging with history, for the good of himself and others, living at the present time.
Charles Campbell's work is also evocative of the slave trade. He manages to turn something particularly traumatic, murderous and brutal into art works that are almost beautiful. His very beautiful, very moving, very simple paintings of migratory flocks of birds in flight are amongst my favourite works by Charles Campbell in this exhibition. Migration (or multiple processes of migration) lies at the hearty of African diasporic sensibilities and this artist captures that sense of importance incredibly well.
JG: And you have used some older work by Christopher Clare.
I saw a reproduction of a painting by Christopher Clare some years ago. It was a re-presentation of the iconic image of the slave ship, crammed with its human cargo, like so many sardines in a tin. I was immediately struck by Clare's painting. It had an almost haunting beauty, despite the horror of what was being depicted. Christopher Clare was one of the first Jamaican artists that I wanted to see when I began my research into this exhibition earlier this year. I was delighted when the opportunity presented itself to include in Curator's Eye II one of his 'slave ship' paintings. This one, a sombre yet majestic work in four sections, again re-presented the slave ship. This time, the wretched inhabitants of the slave ship were transformed into a dignified shoal of humanity, liberated souls swimming with purpose and grace. The piece speaks of the seas as a merciful receiver of tormented people, choosing suicide by drowning over the relentless horrors of the slave ship.
JG: Whenever I walk past Khepera Hatsheptwa's installation I feel this intense, silent, brooding energy.
EC: Khepera's work is clearly - to me at least - about the need for and the importance of building sustainable African-Caribbean family units. Units that are in turn nurtured and sustained by a supportive community. The work speaks of family units, and individuals within these families, needing to be acknowledged and supported and kept safe from harm. With so many people living broken, fractious and dysfunctional lives, progressive economic, political, social and cultural agendas need to be accompanied by healing processes that seek to bring an almost medicinal good to Black people. Khepera's work speaks to me about these ideas.
JG: How did you choose the pieces by Omari Ra?
EC: I love oversized, cinematic images. I especially like the blackness of the portraits. Even in Jamaica, an overwhelmingly black country, this stands out. In these portraits the people are wearing hats and one of them holds what might be a rifle. I asked the artist if it was a reference to cowboys and he said "maybe". Omari Ra's not didactic. He never says "This is what the work is about". I think these images of his are, in their own ways, quite confrontational.
I am particularly intrigued by what the black image means in Jamaica, because in the USA and U.K. it comes with a great deal of baggage. If you see the black image in advertising or art, you seldom have the option of reading it in a race neutral way. We tend to read it in a very different way to an image of a white person. I am very interested in the ways in which the black image might be read, here in Jamaica.
Might the black image be read in ways that are race-specific? Or race-neutral? Or both perhaps? I see Omari Ra's work as confronting and visualising ideas of blackness. These are ideas that some people might find uncomfortable.
See continuation next week.
Curator's Eye II, Identity and History: Personal and Social Narratives in Art in Jamaica runs through 18 March, 2006. Please call the National Gallery at 922 1561 for more details or email us at natgalja@cwjamaica.com.
