STATEMENT
My political sensitization began in the early 1970’s as I began to see the inequalities and injustices that prevailed in the Jamaican society. My left leanings were born during the rise to power of Michael Manley and his vision for a social democratic Jamaica. My first trip to India where I was saw a level of poverty not known in Jamaica set me firmly on a path to use my art as a means to comment on and expose the social wrongs of the world. My environmental awareness began in the 1980’s with the birth of the Green Movement in Germany. It was during this time that I also discovered the Goddess, our Earth Mother.
The themes that form the body of my work are both political and personal with the personal more often than not also making very political statements. Sometimes a work is a direct response to an event, for example the murder of George Floyd theme related or the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean. Generally my choice of themes embodies my response to and reflections on a subject: for example, the hypocrisy of all the proclamations regarding human rights and the Global North trying to hold the Global South to these terms, while contradicting the principles themselves when basic human rights apply in varying grades depending on the country of your origin, your skin colour, your financial status, your connections and so on. A large body of my work is dedicated to the Goddess and to the destruction we bring down on Her, destroying ourselves in the process. My other main theme is the question of my own identity as a person of mixed race. I look at my heritage, my ancestors and try to show the complexities of my duality. My ‘happy’ works are of the female body, though even here I use images of the female body as representing the Goddess and Her pain.
The Role that Art Plays In Society
Art plays a very significant role in society. Art is very much a reflection of the world we live in. Artists comment, make statements about and look critically at events happening in their societies and in the wider world. We question, portray, praise, decry, decipher, comment and it is particularly important, in fact it is essential that we are allowed our voice. It is vital that the political elite are not allowed to distort our messages to conform to their often twisted agendas. Our narrative is not theirs. They should not try to pervert it for their own purposes. They must learn to accept the messages we send for what they are. History has shown that in the long run artists cannot and will not be silenced. So many artists were declared degenerate by the Nazis. They were not silenced. Today’s methods of power, pressure, using the media and social media in an attempt to silence and discredit artists will not work in the long-term.
The role of public sculptures as a catalyst for political debate and change has a long tradition within art histories. They serves to remind us of the art’s role in promoting and maintaining dominant cultural values; and yet also enable the questioning of changing perceptions and values. Many have been removed in the last couple of years as views on imperialism and colonialism have evolved. Post-Colonial opinions and studies influenced the shape of art history for several decades and new generations of students, scholars, critics, curators, artists and audiences are seeking radical re-evaluations and holding cultural institutions and museums as standard-bearers of our collective cultural heritage.
My Art and “The Memory”
Art also plays an important role in remembering and honouring historical events and also questioning how these events are remembered. It is interesting, for example, that while the Holocaust is well documented art and described as a crime against Humanity, the acts of various colonisers such as the British and the Dutch were murdering thousands of people in various countries at roughly the same time has so far not been described in the same terms. Why? Are such acts only described as Crimes against humanity if they are directed towards white people? Do the same acts committed against people of colour not deserve the same acknowledgement? The same applies today as Europe seeks to barricade itself from the “onslaught” of migration from the Global South. In some of my work I seek to highlight the hypocrisy and double standards of current issues such as Europe’s Immigration policies. This question of migration does not go away. It just keeps presenting us with examples of the same old discriminatory patterns. I think that it is important to show that these incidents do not belong only to history but remain alive and well. Many people do not recognize these patterns. I believe that as an artist it is my duty to show these patterns, to keep trying to remind. My work is therefore political. I think it is born out of my own duality, out of my mixed heritage, out of the tragedies of my ancestors, reflecting my thoughts on this history and the fact that history continues to repeat itself. My work is also about my search for that place called “Home”.
I am Jamaican German, a stranger in whichever world I live, too Jamaican for Germany and too German for Jamaica. I carry within two histories of very traumatic, forced migration, being forcibly dispossessed - and then being forced to create a new identity, in a new home. Migration, forced and chosen is a part of who I am. I try to learn more about these histories, look at what they mean for the world in which we live today, and what they mean for me, the holder of the Memory. Slavery and colonialism are generally discussed systems, but what did being a victim of these systems mean for the individual? Not only did slavery strip individuals of their history, culture, identity, home, family, but even their names. A human being was represented with an X, an anonymous stranger no longer even human but merely a “chattel” worth only the value of their labour - if that at all. The chattel has no beginning, no date of birth, no identity. The X simply represented a commodity being shipped for the slave market. Slavery stripped humans down to X’s in an Inventory of belongings. “The slave is always a stranger. Uprooting a slave reduces a person to a thing that can be owned. The slave is always the one missing from home. “(Saydia Hartmann, Lose your Mother). Slave-owners were generously compensated for the loss of these “belongings” when slavery was abolished. Neither the “freed” enslaved nor their descendants have to this day received a penny.
The enslaved do not belong where they reside and they have no family trees. All links to a life before enslavement are broken. With luck and a lot of delving through old records it may be possible to trace back one or two generations. Through the research done by a cousin into the records of owners of the plantation that is today the village where my father was born, we know the (given) name of my great grandmother and we have the names of the slaves who “belonged” to that plantation. Names are important for the Memory.
The X that robbed the name and humanity of my paternal great, great grandmother was not so different from the number tattooed on my maternal grandmother’s arm, robbing her of her name and humanity.
Another similarity between the histories of my two heritages is the sense of loss and nostalgia. “Loss remakes you. Return is as much is as much about the world to which you no longer belong as it is about the one in which you have yet to make a home…The only sure inheritance passed from one generation to the next was this loss, and it defined the tribe. A philosopher had once described it as an identity produced by negation. ” (Saydia Hartmann, Lose your Mother).
It is now proven that the horrors experienced during the Shoah can be passed on through the genes to further generations and that they can experience second hand trauma. So if this is true for the Holocaust survivors, then certainly this would also apply to the descendants of slaves. In this sense one can acquire a “negative” legacy. “It requires the reconstruction of society, which is the only way to honour our debt to the dead. This is the intimacy of our age with theirs - an unfinished struggle. To what end does one conjure the ghost of slavery, if not to incite the hopes of transforming the present?” (Saydia Hartmann, Lose your Mother).
I carry the Memory of the thousands enslaved shipped from Africa across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the thousands of Jews transported to the ghettos and concentration camps. In my work I pay homage to my ancestors and to the Memory. I seek to ensure that we never forget. I look to a future where the wonderful joining of cultures and heritages will enrich our lives when we can accept the beauty and richness of diversity as a true fruit of our histories.