Theme Exploration - Digging Deeper: Personal Identity
By Co-Curator Amalia Amaki, on display in Crossroads Gallery, 124 W Main Street, Lake City, SC
“Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” - Oscar Wilde
The advice in the above quote seems well taken by artists Ming Ying Hong, Vickie Pierre, Fahamu Pecou, Stephen Leo Hayes, Jr., Forrest Lawson, and Peter Lenzo who explore their identities in work addressing issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender, age, religion and regionalism. Signature approaches, media choices, handling of materials and content distinguish the uniqueness of each journey.
Ming Ying Hong, born in China, raised in California, trained in Kentucky and Missouri, and employed in Mississippi and Rhode Island, experienced a myriad of cultural assumptions growing up in the U.S. This imposition of the perceptions of others on how she was defined compelled her to probe into her own identity. A transformative body of artwork emerged from her search that was aptly titled Amalgamation.
Amalgamation (2019) is a series of large scale graphite and charcoal drawings on mylar depicting intertwining fragments from divergent figure sources, including her own body. Hong incorporates figural references observed in fashion, beauty and body-building magazines, and parts of bodies from subjects generally looked upon as unattractive or grotesque. The fragments are conjoined in configurations that render the boundaries of the forms nonspecific, contradictory, and in some cases, nonexistent. By blurring and removing descriptive boundaries between the representative fragments, Hong challenges established hierarchies of beauty, preconceived standards of femininity, prescriptions for inclusion and notions of cultural valuation.
Deeper still, the hybridized bodies also refer to the polar opposites she represents, being Chinese and American, sometimes wondering if she was Chinese enough, viz-a-viz when she questioned if she was American enough. It also applied to her being a very private person investigating her identity in the public platform of art. The mark-making led to her mapping out her cultural heritage, a rediscovery which facilitated her ability to be American with Chinese sensibilities. Hong’s use of mylar as surface material symbolically relates to this cultural reconciliation, mylar being a material known for its stability, reflectivity and transparency.
Miami-based assemblage and installation artist Vickie Pierre explores identity through themes related to memory, gender, ornamentation, fantasy and culture. Taking advice received while studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York to “paint your truth,” she scrutinized the implications of being Haitian and American. She gravitates toward Caribbean and global mythologies, history, gender issues, decorative arts and her heritage in work that gives preference to constructed narratives of “beautiful lies.”
In Totems for My Sisters (We Are Illuminous!) (2021) Pierre extracts overt, psychologically-charged elements from mythological tales and fantasies to illustrate stories about the dichotomous nature of life and love. She manipulates fragments of objects, text, shapes and paint to make the image read as a single statement and series of interrelated comments simultaneously. Vintage Avon perfume bottles, costume jewelry, plastic florals, doll hair, decorative plaques, and wood wall brackets methodically placed against a pink latex and gold metallic paint background emulate boudoir trappings. The outline of a female torso, which may also double as an article of clothing, is central as the other parts operate as props, finishing touches, pieces of memory, or glimmers of hope. Not to be overlooked is the seductive and poetic monologue flanking the forms: I Am Outside…Witness Me; Give Me Release…Give Me Peace.
Black Flowers Blossom (Hanging Tree) (2020), a narrative of a different sort, is based on racial context. In a memorial to victims of racial injustice, Pierre personally honors the memory of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, but also the countless lesser known and unknown victims whose stories go untold in media sources. Her penchant for decorative and ornamental arts is seen in such objects as the flutters of butterflies, signifying transformation, rebirth and freedom, and the shrine’s “tree,” which by its design calls to mind the elaborate umbrellas held by marchers in parades in New Orleans, particularly funeral processionals. Further, the “tree,” acts as a metaphor for death (execution) and life (legacy, martyrdom, remembrance). The association with Billie Holiday’s iconic song Strange Fruit evokes graphic images of the lynching, body burning, and tar-and-feathering of the south. However, by alluding to high-profile cases elsewhere, Pierre underscores the nation-wide scope of racial violence and injustice toward African Americans.
Explorations of black maleness, particularly pertaining to masculinity, reverberate in the paintings, photographs, videos, installations and performance art of Fahamu Pecou. Based in Atlanta, Pecou responds to portrayals of Black males in media and societal outlets with his own constructed narrative of black life. There is a sense of immediacy in his imagery that implies the contemporary gravity of the issue, but does not dismiss pertinent historical realities. In fact, the work emphasizes the degree to which stereotypes about African Americans, especially males, are tools of systemic suppression and oppression.
Using his own body as subject, and being influenced by hip hop culture, culture-based urbanisms, ethnic clothing, and personal experience, Pecou creates emphatic statements on black maleness that challenge pervasive cultural assumptions and affirm his personal identity. One Thing About Me I’ma Be Alright: SANKOFA (2020) asserts in no uncertain terms his sense of self-realization and self-assurance. Image and text are wedded in the painting. The word Sankofa is an important part of the image, connecting to the past, understanding the present and paving a way for the future. It speaks to both sustenance, continued growth and moving forward. The complete statement is equivalent to the image component, echoing its sentiments and serving as its exclamation point.
Pecou’s conversation continues in One Thing About Me I’ma Be Alright: What I Am (2022). Once again, he approaches identity matters by posing questions directed to observers and to himself. In the earlier painting, he states, “ME: I KNOW I AM BUT WHO ARE YOU.” He concludes What I Am with “WHAT I AM IS WHAT I AM. WHAT?!?.” Challenges to false representations of Blackness are not only embedded in the multiple meanings of the image-word exchanges in the two paintings, but also in the interaction between his image and that of the tiny figure seen in both works. Is this tiny figure symbolic of future generations; heritage, i.e., the passing on of cultural traditions; a smaller version of himself, still emerging; a childhood memory; an affinity for innocent truth; or, a version of all of the above? The potentiality of these readings indicate the measures Fahamu Pecou is willing to take to recontextualize interpretations of Black male consciousness and identity.
Perceptions of the black male body, history, capitalism, consumerism and brainwashing are focal themes in the work of Stephen Leo Hayes, Jr. Influenced by his search for beauty and understanding between himself, as a black male, and the objects created, Hayes builds on the belief that if you can dream it, you can do it – a philosophy instilled in him while growing up in Durham, North Carolina. His sculpture-audio installation Voices of Future Past empowers the black male voice by exploring the legacy of being Black in America through the perspectives of black male youths in the Washington, DC area.
The installation provides a platform for young men from various socioeconomic backgrounds to articulate what their experiences have been growing up and how their communities’ educational, criminal justice, religious, and occupational systems and media outlets have viewed them. The young voices are paired with the bust of adult men in a semblance of black male cross-generational discovery. Voices of the 12 to 18-year-olds emanate from speakers embedded in the male sculptures, requiring you to put your ear to the chest of the bust to hear the child inside, reminding listeners that today’s boy is a future man, and, conversely, the man today is the child of the past.
Forrest Lawson was indelibly marked by the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016. Leaving 49 dead and 53 injured, the massacre caused him to intensify reliance on the Queer and feminist inspired theory, already an inspiration for his interdisciplinary work. After the murders at the popular gay nightclub, the Florida native became a quiet warrior of images, words and concepts for the LGBTQ+ cause.
Forty-nine (49 )is a root element in much of his work. 06/12/2016 (2018) presents a series of paper wristbands with transcriptions of interviews from forty-nine participants about Pulse no longer being a safe place for queer people to congregate. Each statement is contained in an acrylic box and paired with the name of a victim of the shooting. The pairing establishes a relationship between the responder, who still exists under fear of potential violence, and someone who lost their life at Pulse. Lawson lines up the responses like mini-headstones in a model cemetery, a surreal remembrance of lost contemporaries.
The diptych, What Are We to You (2020), has two sets of forty-nine petri dishes of blood spots from gay participants. The images call to mind the FDA’s lifetime prohibition on blood donations from gay men implemented in the 1980s. Although the FDA dropped the ban in 2015 and replaced it with a one-year abstinence requirement before shortening the abstinence period to three months in 2020, Lawson responds to the innumerable biases and misconceptions targeting the LGBTQ+ community that the initial action mirrored. Realizing how politically-charged blood is as a topic from the context of his community, the artist placed the specimen in a visually pleasing, orderly arrangement.
Lawson’s attempt to bring humaneness, introspection and enlightenment to the discussion was received differently when many viewers realized the images were of gay people’s blood, which only occurred after reading the fine print. Viewers' association of queer blood with the infectious and the contagious brought an ambiguity to the object, viewers being initially drawn in out of curiosity, then being driven back by the truth, a means to forcing observers to confront their own prejudice. The piece ultimately asks: “What does queer blood actually mean? What does anyone’s blood really signify? What is the difference between the blood of someone who identifies as gay, lesbian, bi, queer or transgender and a person who does not?... especially when the response immediately changes only after reading a label or fine print? What are the 49 murdered to you?” Lawson acknowledges that the 49 mirror himself, and that “Queer is a noun rather than a verb.”
Personal history and identity resound in particular works by Peter Lenzo. When seizures resulting from a brain injury advanced to cause epileptic dementia and memory loss, artmaking kept him going despite the difficulties. Lenzo confesses it is the only time he feels normal. The heads bear his life events, recording everything transpiring with him like journal entries. In each piece, he documents his feelings, ideas, and outlook as well as the moments and meaning associated with the time he takes to make it. Gift of Dementia (2022) expresses awareness and optimism, however, funnels on the head of the piece call to mind the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz, whose lament is “If I only had a brain.” Too Much, Too Many (2023), inscribed on the rear with “Too many seizures, Too many concussions, Too much pain, Too much dementia,” acknowledges the extent of his suffering as he preserves memories externally. Ironically, his heads are hollow, made from a thrown pot on a potter’s wheel then altered by pushing in and pushing out, so the heads, being empty, led him to store memories on the outside, causing them to take on similarities to elaborate headdresses from cultures in West and Central Africa.
Digging deeper into the work of the five artists in this section initiates dialogue for a better understanding of their interests and modes of expression as clues to how they see themselves and intend others to see their art.