Theme Exploration - Mythically Speaking: Southern Past
By Co-Curator Amalia Amaki, on display in TRAX Visual Art Center at 122 Sauls Street, Lake City, SC
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
Winston Churchill
Scrutinizing the past through contemporary lens is a modus operandi for artists such as Jeremiah Ariaz, Marielle Plaisir, Colin Quashie, Karen Ocker, Bill Steber, Masud Olufani, and Tyrone Geter. Some artists are natives to the region and others relocated South but their expressions emanate from a personal fascination or contention with systems, behaviors and assumptions of power that are grounded in legend or mythologized southern history.
The cowboy is a universal image of American culture, the iconic character in the imagined West of pioneer freedom, frontier building, and territorial expansion. Jeremiah Ariaz sheds light on an alternative history to the accepted narrative of the cowboy in Louisiana Trail Riders (2014-2018). This series is an exposé on Black equestrian culture with Creole roots traceable to the 18th century when the Louisiana Territory was the American West.
Reared in Great Bend, Kansas on the Great Plains, and relocating to Baton Rouge, Ariaz brings a unique perspective to investigating the persistent popularity of the fictionalized image of the American West. Homer and Riders, (Jeanerette), Window View: Iberia Parish, Dutt (horseback) and Jamarie (St. Martin’s Parish), Apache Riders (Welsh), and Louisiana Landscape (Landry Parish) are reminders of their importance to Louisiana heritage, and the restricted views of Black horse riders who were likely one out of every four cowboys in early America.
Reimagining culture around power reversals is typical in mixed media works by Marielle Plaisir. Inspired by her French Caribbean roots and vision of an ideal life without oppression, her subjects are often figures who fought against racial domination. A case in point is R. Bridges from “In The Malediction of Cham” Series (2021). It presents a black and white photograph of five-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges integrating William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana upholstery fabric, handmade embroidery and other objects. The secondary female figure, extracted from a period European painting, represents the bourgeoisie establishing a role-reversal in the treatment of the female subjects. Plaisir surrounds Bridges with rich colors and flora referencing Caribbean landscapes and beauty, rather than the group of security protecting her in the original photograph, disrupting the usual portrayal to power, domination, and prejudice.
Wit, sarcasm and satire are common elements in the work of Colin Quashie. He places recognizable historical and contemporary subjects in unexpected relationships with identifiable objects that invite reconsiderations of stereotypes, behavior and perception. In this body of work, he manipulates the placement of shackles in relationships that bring past and present associative meanings to imagery in powerful one-liners that convey deeper stories. A leg shackle appears across the stern gaze of Harriett Tubman in Rose Colored as if eyeglasses, evoking thoughts about her visionary ability to discern traps and tricks along escape routes, and contradicting the naiveté the rose colored glasses imply. Louis Armstrong is portrayed with a shackle angled downward as if his trumpet being played in Gabriel, possibly commenting on the musician’s role as one of the most influential figures in jazz who inspired musicians to take up the instrument over five decades.
Cracked Rear View depicts Kanye West wearing a leg shackle for eyeglasses with cracked lenses reflecting images of crowded men as the glasses rest on his nose beneath his eyes. The connected chain loops around his neck are reminiscent of oversized jewelry commonly worn by rap and hip hop performers. Cracked Rear View was the debut studio album (1994) of Hootie and the Blowfish, the title song about a driver who brags about never having had an accident, but has caused many behind him by never thinking situationally about his driving. Colin Kaepernick is shown with a chain hanging down his face and a wrist shackle dangling in front of his mouth in Shhhhhhackled (Colin Kaepernick), corresponding to the efforts of the NFL, media and other entities to silence Kaepernick’s activism against police brutality and social injustice in America.
Hurricane Katrina was the impetus for a new direction in the life and work of Karen Ocker. Rebuilding a sense of home after the devastation of the flood and finding ways to recycle discarded items into art materials set her on a path that led her to see beauty and creative potential in debris and otherwise unlikely and unwanted objects. Restoring a focal interest in painting, Ocker turned to the New Orleans blues and jazz culture for inspiration. She paid tribute to a number of performers in Gilded Splendor (2023), Tribute to Ellis Marsalis (2020), and Piano Professors: Portraits of Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair (2023), anchored in oil portraits on birch plywood framed in reclaimed wood. Piano hammers, keys and pedals, lucky horseshoes, gilded splinters, radio speaker cloth, spindles, and cast iron fireplace surround were among the found objects appropriately complementing each of the mixed media portraits.
Although a native of Nashville, Tennessee, Bill Steber is devoted to Delta blues and Mississippi culture and has made it the subject of his documentary photography for decades. He has amassed thousands of artifacts over thirty years from blues history sites, most notably from Star of the West Plantation in Greenwood, Mississippi where the home of famed musician and songwriter Robert Johnson stood when he died in 1938, and Little Zion Church where he is buried. Steber was inspired to use relics from both locations in Robert Johnson Greenwood Death Triptych (c. 2022), a mixed media shrine based on the three published photographs of the musician.
His unusual treatment of Johnson calls to mind the local legend claiming Johnson’s talent was attributed to him having sold his soul to the devil to play Dixie blues. In this regard, the piece is also reminiscent of a part of the storyline and the overall feel of the film O brother Where Art Thou, where the Black guitar player sold his soul to the devil in order to outplay all others when it came to the blues. Steber portrays Johnson suited in skeletal form holding a guitar in the large center panel, flanked on either side by seated on a throne with a halo around his head, fully dressed to perform playing his guitar, flanked on either side by figures representing diametrically opposed versions of him in the legend, a benighted saint of the Delta Blues, and the Fustian devil. According to the artist, the faces are blank “because neither stereotype represents him as a real person or the artistic genius he was.” Steber saw the work as an extension of his documentary photography.
The legacy of his mother and transformative nine-years of experiences among the Fulani people in Zaria, Nigeria influenced the socially conscious imagery of Tyrone Geter. Lessons well learned from both sources contributed to his persistent efforts to show strength and pain, endurance and innocence, and compassion and hope in figural works, especially his portrayals of women. Bulls Eye (c. 2015) and Target (2015) are two examples from a collection of drawings and paintings titled Ain’t I a Woman? (inspired by Sojourner Truth). The charcoal works are intended to embody on one hand, how Black women are viewed in American society – as targets of a number of historical abuses, gender biases, and injustices – while, on the other hand, they defy the odds, make sacrifices and demand better lives for themselves and their children with a quiet strength and spirituality. Geter intends for his artwork to collectively be the carrier of their stories.
Social marginalization, resonance of memory, African and African American folklore and constructive (spiritual) resilience are among the themes Masud Olufani pays attention to in his work. Pursuant to these goals, the artist examines collective and individual narratives relevant to African societies and the retention and adapted practices in Diasporic communities in the Americas. Aware that his maternal roots were in Sierra Leone and having subsequently experienced life and customs of the West African nation first hand, he drew inspiration from women as cross-cultural conveyors of voices, grace, strength, and ancestral legacies.
Wo-Mende (2023)is a series of twenty-four images of Mende secret society helmet masks in serigraphs on plexiglass superimposed over graphite drawings of female faces. Wo-Mende, a phonetic take on women, may also reference the woes of Mende women, embracing the breadth of their societal and familial responsibilities. The layering is a unification of past and present, heritage and contemporary life, secrecy and transparency, and oral history and palpable visual expression.
These artists speak through works that affirm their understanding and appreciation for the myths, legends, legacies, and histories that contribute to the definition of the South. Their imagery inspires, informs, and reminds observers that the southern past is ever-evolving, and as such, is ever present.