Gratitude

'Is a must. Yeah. 

...Mi see blessings fall by mi right hand' 

I am learning about gratitude. I am grateful for this journey and all the past journey and journeys yet to manifest.

Today I express my gratitude for my hands, from the time I wake to the time I sleep my hands are always active in a motion. Everything my mind conjures up or desires has to pass through my hands before it manifests. 

To steady yourself you use your hands, to conceal an inappropriate giggle use our hands, when we are nervous or anxious we reach for our hands, our hands connect the intangible with the tangible.  

As I spend hours cutting vegetables, mixing spices, I realise my hands are my release. As I spend hours writing and drawing in forms, shapes, letters and words incomprehensible to others I acknowledge my hands are the bridge to my ancestors as their knowledge, unravelling itself the more I learn myself. When my hands are creating the concept of time and the outside world melting. 

P.S I am grateful for the opportunity of learning me, I love discovering that the box is illusionary and only appears once I place it there. I am grateful for the people I have met, I am meeting and am yet to meet, I am grateful for the art I have created am creating and will create. I am grateful that it never ended and was simply beginning. I am alive and I am grateful.

Matrix

As I scroll everything in the real world slowly ceases to exist. One second I am with a group of friends on holiday; somewhere warm no doubt, the next I am with a couple as they declare their love;  its cute so I smirk a little then stop, I am now reading receipts; someone is being exposed DAMN; just as fast I am outside a school as blows are hastily handed out and received with tenacity; I am disgusted and continue my scroll, I am now inside a cube inside a collection in a museum.  

So immersed and stimulated by my socials that the real world becomes more like a stimulation, one I can dip in and out of as I wish. In the process of scrolling I miss the friends talking and laughing animatedly, I miss the sombre woman as she walks, I miss the man furiously typing away on his phone, I miss the moment he glances up and a smirk appears on his face before returning to his phone, I miss the impatient driver who is clearly embarrassed by his tragic attempt at over taking a bus, I miss a teachable patience moment. 

Social media is stealing the humanity.  When life's moments are viewed through the lens of how will I frame this on my socials, we miss the opportunity to experience things as they are for what they are, the beauty and fragility lost. 

Our lives mirror the Matrix – Hi Keanu 😉- only that in this version the difference between real and imagined is becoming undistinguishable. I am not anti-social but there is something we are losing and for the most part we will not know what that is until we are past this stage and are whatever we have lost is completely gone.  

P.S: Maybe we have already lost it.  Theres countless times we see absurd things but can easily walk past or not react to. Part of this must have to do with the way that we are able to click at something else if what we are viewing is not up to par, or is displeasing. Look at your someone as they are doing social media and see just how disconnected from their surroundings they really are. 

P.S :  Maybe my point can’t be reached in 400 words.

Kara Walker No/ Kara Walker Yes/ Kara Walker Maybe

After what I can only describe as a disturbed introduction to Kara Walkers silhouette work, I thought of history and whose stories get told and retold, and whose story is lost to time. I thought about audience, who in her wider work is she pandering to? Is her work in the same line as alligator bait art or does it fall in the column of liberation art to some extent? 

Her silhouettes depict images of decapitated heads, rape, and violence, when I first saw these images I was overcome with emotion so tense, it ricocheted from within me - words would minimise how intense it was - what followed was disgust and horror, but to whom were these directed to? Was it the art itself or was it because this was a reflection of a sometimes forgotten past. To my surprise I settled on something akin to pride, as I acknowledged the resilience necessary to survive the scenes she depicted. 

Kara's gift to the heart of empire, Fons Americanus stands tall and regal. The sheer size of it stops you and demands you take it all in. I thought about the use of the term negress, the use is peculiar as it is not a 'reclaimed' term but the use is justifiable because this is a gift to empire and empire is white. 

The fountain depicts a hyper visible yet invisible black woman with a slit throat and lactating breasts, underneath that an array of scenes from an empty noose to an army general, a jovial queen Victoria and a man who appears to be pleading as he knees and below that is a snorkelled black woman swimming in shark infested waters to a hapless man who seems to have been completely overcome by the reality of his dangers. This allegory felt like her silhouettes in a larger than life form, the interconnectedness of the seeming unconnected. 

This had me thinking of how white brits engage with British history, unlike American history that is tarnished by the legacy of slavery, brits are largely disconnected from the true horror of empire, to many the idea is 'to leave it alone and move on' (05:30 - 06: 02). 

Part of point of the work is to never forget, and England has a way of coming off Scot free when it comes to the reality and critique of empire across the world. Slavery merely a skimmed through period in history classes.

With the limited understanding of the horrors of empire very few white British spectators would digest the piece in its entire depth. Would they have better digested the piece if the throat bleed red and milk flowed from the bosom?

African American and African history is riddled in violence. A violence only we can fully fathom, we are able to comprehend the horrors of racial history because of the horrors of present day. And through the spilt blood, the silent tears and milk still we rise. 

It's a yes Kara Walker from me.

Ps. You could argue that because of how white audiences engage with the piece - selfies and throwing pennies into it- further implicates them in the commodification of black experiences. This is done throughout history from when lynchings were a family spectacle and people would take their family to the human zoos where the black experience was viewed without deep acknowledgement and deeper detachment. Kara Walker is art in which the white slave masters are depicted as they were.