Blues and pinks, feminine and masculine resilience at Castellani House..

 (Echoes of Resilience by the Division of Creative Arts, Faculty of Education and Humanities, UG continues at Castellani House until 19th August, 2024. I apologise to the artists whose work appear in photos here without the credit to them by name) 

Masculine

"All dem man wan look like woman.. " the bus driver says near Bourda Market as a man with long locks on a motorbike cut across him. The bus driver sounded angry,  'He got a  <d.,.k>;' ...

Proud man that he was, made in God's image. he had just told a woman passenger that she look 'nice wid she big belly' .. the woman had laughed.

Another man in God's image , riding a bicycle, with his crutch across the handlebar had stopped to tell a woman joining another minibus that 'you looking beautiful today' and so on.. and being very close to the bus window so I was hearing, he could have been talking to me too. 

So I told him 'uncle you looking beautiful too' and some passengers laughed nervously as he said 'whuh' before we drove off.

Everyday sexism in Guyana, part of  the proud culture which puts the masculine above everything that is not seen as masculine. 

Sexism on my mind as I have said yes to an event where I have to push my imagination to invoking artistic ways of transforming the culture of the bus driver and the man on the bicycle to a nurturance culture.

Feminine

I come into the ground floor of Castellani House. There are three sections  and I walk towards the farthest section with the paintings with the blue/blue-ish colours. There is an installation - I think - of a veil of blue flowers - I can't find the title. 

Not sure if my fondness for blue is anything to do with the penis I have .

There is blue writing on another wall. The wall has extracts from poetry of Mahadai Das and Olive Senior and a quote from Meghan Markle. 

 

There is something on the wall behind the writing, a kind of faint background. The text from Olive Senior 'There was nothing of our landscape there. Nothing about us' 

The background looks like there are faint skyscrapers of what many hope would be Guyana's new landscape.

I move around, looking to see if the background would change. There is a lightening and darkening. I search for a projector somewhere. 

I am not looking at the paintings.

There is no projector. 

Shadows and so. 

Not a part of the display, but for me , a part of the display.

Echoes

The exhibition is called Echoes of Resilience.  I shared the digital flyer for this exhibition, and for another one coming up by the Berbice Arts and Crafts called Echoes of Guyana. 

Visual artists invoking 'echoes' rather than say 'reflections'.  And that in Echoes, we don't get the real thing, just the lesser derivative of the thing. Guyana especially.

I am careful how I use the word 'resilience' these days. 

We understand it to mean our ability to adapt to our circumstances. 

'Resilience' has been weaponised to say that people who have experienced trauma have personal responsibility to heal.. something is wrong with them in that they are not able to recover, and that something is wrong if we not 'tolerating' adversity and getting stronger rather than weaker from dealing with the adversities. 

I see from the exhibition notes that Exxon provided funds, they even make a statement.

And echoes in my head about the need for resilience in many of us after the trauma caused by the industries and politics around those like Exxon. And the disruption to our climate, the environment is connected to the continued violence we experience.

I haven't looked at the work properly. 

Just the shadows, and the notes.

Feminine

The blue space I am drawn to includes work by Tahirih Gerrard in the space called ' The Garden of Feminine Voices'. 

Tahirih Gerrard explains that she is intrigued by the power of words on paper in poems and stories, especially from women.

The artist explains that she wanted to produce work related to issues women face. The pieces include work responding to Olive Senior's 'Colonial Girls' School' and Mahadai Das;' "My final gift to life". 

One piece Doubling is the most disturbing , reflection on a scene from Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eye, Memory.

One piece not connected to poetry or writing is called Galactic Nurturer which centres the potential of many women to be pregnant in the creation of the Universe.

 I see a representation of god as 'she' rather than 'he' , glad when I see that as  the religious context of the bus driver and the man on the bicycle is the imagining the creator as He.  I know this contrast to the Hindu cosmology of the masculine Lord Vishnu breathing out universes, even as we imagine Shakti the divine energy as feminine.

But the voices of some women echo in my head, women who tell me that their lack of desire to have children, or the trauma of having children which they cannot talk about because of fear of judgement.. , and who nurture without being pregnant and without reward. 

How do I as a man, create some piece which imagines nurturing inclusive of all those voices?

 Liberation

Rouchelle Stephens extracted racist and discriminatory words from different places. 

She put them on paper to create paper boats in an installation 'Pages of Liberation'. The boats are hanging, some of the words can be read. The words are ugly, hurtful, on the graceful boats. 

And there are everyday examples of how racism and other prejudice can also be in pretty ways, graceful and so, normalised , not only on in the ugly words in spaces.

I think about Akima McPherson' Text Suspended ,  with the words of women on paper in an installation, walk with me.  The importance of telling the stories.

I wonder though, about where are the healing words away from these boats, and our duty to give life to those words.

Pinks

The third section has paintings with a  lot of shades of pink, red. Vibrant colours. 

These works are by Aubrey Alves, who migrated from Guyana and returned. His work is about the pain of migration. He also writes about witnessing the death of a student when he was a teacher.

The colours seem 'happy' , not associated with the titles like wounds and trauma. There are butterflies around too, Dominique Hunter has in her work  which was on display in Converging Ties.  

Do they use the butterflies the same way, or differently?

Extract of Caribbean Wounds by Aubrey Alves

And I realise that the man here is happy using vibrant colours while the blue I was drawn to, was used by Tahirih Gerrard in the Garden of Feminine Voices .  

 

Diary in the Aubrey Alves section

Tahirih Gerrard and Rouchelle Stephens have book presentations on their work (the books themselves creatively done - and there is an experience of opening these books like moving through the artists' minds). I ask the attendants if Aubrey Alves has a book. They point to an old diary with some papers inside and cover with some blue paint. I open it and think nah.. this is personal.. maybe this is part of the display. 

Or like the shadows, maybe not.

There are photos of the artist with suitcases. Jerry Barry, another re-migrant artist, also a teacher, had exhibited beautiful landscapes in an exhibition earlier this year. 

Jerry Barry and Aubrey Alves are about twenty years older than me judging from their career notes.. 

Jerry Barry used different , shades for the landscapes - browns, grays, greens.. not these bright colours for the Scenes from long ago.

Wondering which colours the minibus driver and the man with the crutch on the bicycle would use to paint if they want to go on a healing journey. And what they would think of the colours Jerry Barry and Aubrey Alves use in their work.

Resilience

Tahirih Gerrard paints resilience of women as trees. Aubrey Alves has a different representation of colours arranged in way that is fascinating, but I don't understand.

Extract of Reslient, 2024 by Tahirih Gerrard

Extract of Resilience in Colours by Aubrey Alves

I took a longer time to write this blog, than I spent at the exhibition. My mind is on another challenging task in which I have to go outside the boundaries of things I understand into the realm of things I do not.

There are other things I thought about - and that is probably more about me, than the artists -  but not everything has to be written.

Even as I promised one of the people who told me about the exhibition that I would write honestly.