Introspection, ants, spiders
"Tell me what you think the artist is trying to say" Inmaculada had asked me. She and I were looking at a painting, and I could not think of any opening lines.. but she did.
Inmaculada.. giving me the look with the eyes and the half smile which says that it would be nice if I answer or maybe there would be no more conversations..
So I did my spiel.. talking about the colours , and the lines and so on which reflect confusion and sadness and .. and she then said .. "Ah.. you have just told me about you.. , not about the artist"
Me and the Surrealists
Inmaculada's challenging smile is in my head when I decide to go and take a look at the surrealist paintings by my Facebook friend Surrealist and Abstract drawings by Dominique Hunter . I have this image of bearded white men with wild eyes and manic tempers who paint up these bizarre images with cut open bodies and so on.. the one time I saw Ms Hunter - she struck me as the kind of girl who would do well at Maths and Computer Science.. and after seeing the paintings, I think she just might do well at those if she put her mind to it. I have tried to read a bit about what surrealism means, but my intellect cannot absorb that level of mind bending.
Inner vision, skills and boundless horizons..The Exhibition notes are instructive - I had to read them twice to get a sense of what is going on. I like the idea that the artist's work is influenced by 'inner vision, skills and boundless horizons..' It is one thing to have those dreams and another to use graphite and other media to put them down. The artist said it was tedious, and nuff respect is due for that kind of hard work, which sometimes has no rewards.
I stand at the door of the hall and the paintings make no sense.. while I thinking old bearded white men and a 22 year old girl from Guyana. I stop thinking of the girl from Guyana though, and start wandering through the exhibition.
Anatomical Abstractions and Machine Man are supposed to be about the body as a machine, I think. The body is a 'man', and there are machine parts replacing muscles.. this fascination with human beings as being mechanical, or sci fi robot things? I am thinking of Skeldon, and the slaves and the current sugar workers wanting more pay, and the failure of the mechanisation to replace human labour.
This series seems to be about sports, rather than labour.
The beginning of the End.. , man already thinking of his next beginning, woman lying down looking like she mourning, and ants around. Apparently Salvador Dalí used ants to symbolise death.. and while this drawing does not have too much details like the others,, it nice.. but something nagging me and then I realise that the couple are caucasian looking and because of my own race consciousness and straight Hair, and the whole thing about Hair.. I realise that a lot of the bodies in this exhibition have straight hair.
Iatrophobia - fear of doctors (dentists) - amazing, all the doctors leaning over, the bright lights, and I think about the dentist and the dental technician who were doing my extraction and who you lie back, powerless .. but you cannot see them. This is personal to the artist because she had to do a surgery (for carpel tunnel?)
Wrapped ceramic head.. one of those horror movie things.. because the more I looked at it, I swear that the thing was moving, living underneath and I am not sure if I wake up in the middle of the night and come to see that in the moonlight..
Journey Into Unknown.. road disappearing, though I think of this journey through the exhibition, the drawing has a straight road disappearing into a horizon, but some journeys take you all over the place, you go one way, find forked paths.. we are not always lucky to have one road.. because, roads are mapped, and you know where you could end up when you are on a road.
Tug of War Kind of love. the machine thing, kissing the frog versus the man holding her back.. this frog thing .. some European fairy tale that I had forgotten about, the woman has a long plait as well, Rapunzel?
Eventual dissolution - man,woman back to back after the Beginning of the end
A complicated love story.. very complicated, some Kama Sutra on the trapeze, and an ugly looking Cupid man playing the trapeze.. and a head which look a bit like a Dali head .. not sure what this all means, but some people's love stories are like this. Of course this drawing does not have to be about love? Do we have Guyanese equivalent of cupid?
The Process.. violent.. woman cut in half, woman being birthed.. spider web all over, what with the spiders? Some women on a step? Why are the women in this exhibition tortured so?
The illusion.. thinking about the Sexual Offences Act and what does half open zippers and half open blouses and shirt showing hairy chests mean to those who say that if people dress respectably, no one would rape them?
Absurdity.. came back to this a few times, with the meat hanging on the shelf and one of the meat is a woman .. and thinking of gender and objects and meat , the woman's face looks happy, as though she is glad to be meat? And the rear ends of the cows..?
At night she comes out to play.. the Vamp, not the woman who comes out to work, but to play and this fascination with 'straight hair'? Are there no older women with bald heads who come out to play? Or Kinky hair? And I wonder at the wide open legs.. about the transgendered persons who can only use the night to come out and play and work
Peering Vulture.. vulture eating out somebody hand.. and a yellow sky which is ripped, cleverly, so that you kind of look in the hole, to see what is behind that sky and the tear and the hook which is keeping the eye open.
Introspection
Thiis is digital photography played with.. my favourite in the whole collection. The schizophrenia of introspection with one part caring for the other, or one part seeking solace from the other part.. this thing called 'self care'. Nice picture, safe place, a tidy bedroom too tidy though, my introspection is done when the bed not made up. Those straight lines seem like boundaries and confining everything.. defining spaces, while the exhibition notes talk about 'boundless horizons'
Woman Behold thy beauty - a man looking figure, with fig leaf somewhere (why?) holding up a mirror to Medusa with long curly locks..
Mermaid and Muse - the underworld, Mermaids, skeletons,
Let me by Angry.. great fury there, and then the cautious soldier in the mouth, thinking of the man who quoted Martin Carter about how food muzzles the mouth and another facebook friend who said that self serving outrage bothers her.. so that this fury which has no target.. or is not turned into action, because.. the soldiers are hiding.. OR.. is that something is waiting to happen, the soldier are masked, hiding, waiting in ambush..inside all of us.. a lot of the rage and fury in the world though, is directed against soldiers, so thinking of the use of the soldiers here and Bernadette Persaud's work
The Great Act - two bodies floating,, very light looking.. and thinking whether this relates to the "Beginning of the End'.. they look similar somehow
The Iris pictures.. why Iris and not Hibiscus ? Surrender - ants again, and a woman and another woman being hung on a ball - does the artist hate women?
Alternative realities.. and conservative dreams
"Alternative realities" we are told is what surrealists do, they express these alternative and mixed realities. Some of these alternatives appear violent, like projections of our existing realities. On the other hand, I am fascinated by the almost uniform depiction of the body as being lithe, young, straight haired, visible breasts.. what happens to that alternative reality where we appreciate that the bodies are diverse? The artist is young, is it that youth only sees and recognises those bodies?
Where is Guyana in all of this? What symbolises Death for the artist? Ants for us is just an annoyance, hardly death like for Dali? Is surrealism only European (white)?
Making music is a cheerful print, vibrant colours. I heard a teacher tell her students at the exhibition that they have to look at the colours and the lines. I could only imagine the level of skill that it would take to create these... this artist is possibly the youngest person to give a solo exhibition at Castellani House - despite my frustrations, I am glad I went.
The exhibition continues at Castellani House until 11 January, 2011.
Inmaculada.. giving me the look with the eyes and the half smile which says that it would be nice if I answer or maybe there would be no more conversations..
So I did my spiel.. talking about the colours , and the lines and so on which reflect confusion and sadness and .. and she then said .. "Ah.. you have just told me about you.. , not about the artist"
Me and the Surrealists
Inmaculada's challenging smile is in my head when I decide to go and take a look at the surrealist paintings by my Facebook friend Surrealist and Abstract drawings by Dominique Hunter . I have this image of bearded white men with wild eyes and manic tempers who paint up these bizarre images with cut open bodies and so on.. the one time I saw Ms Hunter - she struck me as the kind of girl who would do well at Maths and Computer Science.. and after seeing the paintings, I think she just might do well at those if she put her mind to it. I have tried to read a bit about what surrealism means, but my intellect cannot absorb that level of mind bending.
Inner vision, skills and boundless horizons..The Exhibition notes are instructive - I had to read them twice to get a sense of what is going on. I like the idea that the artist's work is influenced by 'inner vision, skills and boundless horizons..' It is one thing to have those dreams and another to use graphite and other media to put them down. The artist said it was tedious, and nuff respect is due for that kind of hard work, which sometimes has no rewards.
I stand at the door of the hall and the paintings make no sense.. while I thinking old bearded white men and a 22 year old girl from Guyana. I stop thinking of the girl from Guyana though, and start wandering through the exhibition.
Anatomical Abstractions and Machine Man are supposed to be about the body as a machine, I think. The body is a 'man', and there are machine parts replacing muscles.. this fascination with human beings as being mechanical, or sci fi robot things? I am thinking of Skeldon, and the slaves and the current sugar workers wanting more pay, and the failure of the mechanisation to replace human labour.
This series seems to be about sports, rather than labour.
The beginning of the End.. , man already thinking of his next beginning, woman lying down looking like she mourning, and ants around. Apparently Salvador Dalí used ants to symbolise death.. and while this drawing does not have too much details like the others,, it nice.. but something nagging me and then I realise that the couple are caucasian looking and because of my own race consciousness and straight Hair, and the whole thing about Hair.. I realise that a lot of the bodies in this exhibition have straight hair.
Iatrophobia - fear of doctors (dentists) - amazing, all the doctors leaning over, the bright lights, and I think about the dentist and the dental technician who were doing my extraction and who you lie back, powerless .. but you cannot see them. This is personal to the artist because she had to do a surgery (for carpel tunnel?)
Wrapped ceramic head.. one of those horror movie things.. because the more I looked at it, I swear that the thing was moving, living underneath and I am not sure if I wake up in the middle of the night and come to see that in the moonlight..
Journey Into Unknown.. road disappearing, though I think of this journey through the exhibition, the drawing has a straight road disappearing into a horizon, but some journeys take you all over the place, you go one way, find forked paths.. we are not always lucky to have one road.. because, roads are mapped, and you know where you could end up when you are on a road.
Tug of War Kind of love. the machine thing, kissing the frog versus the man holding her back.. this frog thing .. some European fairy tale that I had forgotten about, the woman has a long plait as well, Rapunzel?
Eventual dissolution - man,woman back to back after the Beginning of the end
A complicated love story.. very complicated, some Kama Sutra on the trapeze, and an ugly looking Cupid man playing the trapeze.. and a head which look a bit like a Dali head .. not sure what this all means, but some people's love stories are like this. Of course this drawing does not have to be about love? Do we have Guyanese equivalent of cupid?
The Process.. violent.. woman cut in half, woman being birthed.. spider web all over, what with the spiders? Some women on a step? Why are the women in this exhibition tortured so?
The illusion.. thinking about the Sexual Offences Act and what does half open zippers and half open blouses and shirt showing hairy chests mean to those who say that if people dress respectably, no one would rape them?
Absurdity.. came back to this a few times, with the meat hanging on the shelf and one of the meat is a woman .. and thinking of gender and objects and meat , the woman's face looks happy, as though she is glad to be meat? And the rear ends of the cows..?
At night she comes out to play.. the Vamp, not the woman who comes out to work, but to play and this fascination with 'straight hair'? Are there no older women with bald heads who come out to play? Or Kinky hair? And I wonder at the wide open legs.. about the transgendered persons who can only use the night to come out and play and work
Peering Vulture.. vulture eating out somebody hand.. and a yellow sky which is ripped, cleverly, so that you kind of look in the hole, to see what is behind that sky and the tear and the hook which is keeping the eye open.
Introspection
Thiis is digital photography played with.. my favourite in the whole collection. The schizophrenia of introspection with one part caring for the other, or one part seeking solace from the other part.. this thing called 'self care'. Nice picture, safe place, a tidy bedroom too tidy though, my introspection is done when the bed not made up. Those straight lines seem like boundaries and confining everything.. defining spaces, while the exhibition notes talk about 'boundless horizons'
Woman Behold thy beauty - a man looking figure, with fig leaf somewhere (why?) holding up a mirror to Medusa with long curly locks..
Mermaid and Muse - the underworld, Mermaids, skeletons,
Let me by Angry.. great fury there, and then the cautious soldier in the mouth, thinking of the man who quoted Martin Carter about how food muzzles the mouth and another facebook friend who said that self serving outrage bothers her.. so that this fury which has no target.. or is not turned into action, because.. the soldiers are hiding.. OR.. is that something is waiting to happen, the soldier are masked, hiding, waiting in ambush..inside all of us.. a lot of the rage and fury in the world though, is directed against soldiers, so thinking of the use of the soldiers here and Bernadette Persaud's work
The Great Act - two bodies floating,, very light looking.. and thinking whether this relates to the "Beginning of the End'.. they look similar somehow
The Iris pictures.. why Iris and not Hibiscus ? Surrender - ants again, and a woman and another woman being hung on a ball - does the artist hate women?
Alternative realities.. and conservative dreams
"Alternative realities" we are told is what surrealists do, they express these alternative and mixed realities. Some of these alternatives appear violent, like projections of our existing realities. On the other hand, I am fascinated by the almost uniform depiction of the body as being lithe, young, straight haired, visible breasts.. what happens to that alternative reality where we appreciate that the bodies are diverse? The artist is young, is it that youth only sees and recognises those bodies?
Where is Guyana in all of this? What symbolises Death for the artist? Ants for us is just an annoyance, hardly death like for Dali? Is surrealism only European (white)?
Making music is a cheerful print, vibrant colours. I heard a teacher tell her students at the exhibition that they have to look at the colours and the lines. I could only imagine the level of skill that it would take to create these... this artist is possibly the youngest person to give a solo exhibition at Castellani House - despite my frustrations, I am glad I went.
The exhibition continues at Castellani House until 11 January, 2011.
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