INSIDE MY SKIN: WHITE 'MADAM' AND
'BLACK' ART.
I am starting again. It is a treat to quote an intelligent comedian like Tim Minchin who advocates nuanced thinking. Nuanced thinking is needed when we consider the petition to ban Brett Bailey's Exhibit B. Like many of those writing about it I haven't seen it. It's 800k away from me across France. I have read the arguments however and they are important to me and my art.
Dividing the world into black and
white is plain silly because the world is not divided into
simplistic opposites and never has been.
Brett Bailey's Exhibit B does of
course raise questions for artists and humans with thin skins or
thick hides of whatever shade they are on the outside. Art is
supposed to shake up ideas.
I am white and I have made art about
Africa. I was born in Africa and lived most of my life there. I don't
speak on behalf of other people. I speak of what I feel and think I
know. What I think and know changes as I learn and change. The colour
of my skin should not stop me saying what I feel unless I prevent
someone else from being heard by saying it or if I defame someone. I
should not be silenced but asked to listen.
Sara Myers' boycott seems to be
based on the idea that Brett Bailey and all white South Africans are
racist. They aren't. He isn't as far as I can judge.
Yes - there is racism – and
bigotry in the world but banning an exhibition won't change that and
a boycott may be inadvertently racist and bigoted if it doesn't have the whole picture.
The world and art can't be improved
by claiming that there is a clear gulf between what's right
and what's wrong, between what's black and what's white.
The world has never been that
simple.
Going to war for simplistic reasons
is not helpful.
Fighting for understanding is not
going to war.
Banning, boycotting and destroying
art is almost without exception bad for human liberty, freedom of
thought and autonomy. If you don't like Exhibit B then go and make
art of your own- write your own books – start a counter culture,
create a new one. Bad art tends to disappear and die soon enough.
What matters is that art provokes arguments and discussions, it can
change perceptions, it can make us feel and therefore think and
disagree.
Exhibit B and Brett Bailey have made
us see people suffering but he wasn't doing it to humiliate anyone - what would that achieve?
There is resistance to this kind of
show but not because people are callous or don't care or are racist
but because it is painful. Guilt and responsibility are hard to
handle but victims hate this stuff too. Any therapist will tell you
that.
Perhaps this is a reason why Sara Myers is
angry with it? I expect it would upset me very much too.
During the Slave Trade there were white British people who were made poorer by
it, white people who had no connection to it and some who would have
opposed it. The Slave Trade made some people very rich. Though some countries benefited greatly not all their citizens did. Lets hit the right targets.
Why did Bailey get such a bad press
when it was okay for black Steve McQueen to make 'Twelve Years a
Slave.' and for white Brad Pitt to produce it?
Perhaps because his show is more
accessible than the film to demonstrators who need to vent their
feelings about it.
The pain and discomfort of the
'exhibits' – the people who 'acted' is what all actors who choose
to play grim roles suffer. It is certainly very difficult and
upsetting to write or make art about abuse of any description.
Freak shows? Is not most reality
television a freak show? Aren't freaks and celebrities often the same
people? Don't we love freaks and learn to empathise by internalising
their suffering? Don't artists and the creative process exist on the
borderlines between 'normal' and 'freak'?
Brett Bailey is South African. He
lives in South Africa where all races are equal under the law and
people of all races and colours contributed to the fight for freedom.
He has the right to speak on any subject including slavery. He has
the right to be wrong. No one can shut him up because they don't
agree with him. Free speech is one of the foundations of democracy.
Would there – or should there -
have been this outcry if Bailey had had a black skin? Or been a black
woman? Then again would a black man or woman make this kind of art?
Well - yes they have – there are many examples in contemporary
art.
Look at Kara Walker's 'Sugar Baby'
It looks wonderful and probably
justifies its scale and expense. I would like to ask Walker what she
thinks of Exhibit B and of Brett Bailey but I don't know what answer
she would give. It does seems that slavery still creates divisions
between black and white Americans. Why and how that gulf
continues to exist needs to be the subject of another discussion.
I remember in Johannesburg in about
1991 seeing an installation by Penny Siopsis about slavery and its
relationship to the sugar trade – she is a white South African.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/penny-siopis
So are we judging art or artist or
skin colour when we compare these three exhibitions?
What I personally see as problematic
about the Bailey and Walker exhibitions is their enormous cost and
their position in the 'billionaire art industry of the world' but
that is also a discussion for another occasion.
How would Exhibit B have been seen
if the slaves represented were white and the slave masters black?
Would that change perceptions? Does this exhibit say that having a
black skin gives you more of a propensity to be enslaved than a white
skin? I don't think so.
That is not the lesson of history.
Slavery has been around ever since there were humans. Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Hebrews, Europeans, Africans – all practised slavery. It seems
there have always been forms of bondage and slavery. Today, though illegal
in most of the world, it is even more profitable. The scale of the
Triangle Trade, its acceptance as normal and its links to industry
and commerce made it enormous and monstrous. The Holocaust was
genocide on an industrial scale which makes it unthinkable though
true but these terrible crimes were not the only ones to happen in human history. Jews and black people, whites and gentiles have been perpetrators as well as victims.
The human scale however is always
personal and humans need to deal with these horrors personally and
individually regardless of their outer covering of skin.
South African Resistance Art -
another example - was made by artists of different colours.
I come from an involvement with art
in Zambia where I facilitated artists, exhibitions and workshops
before 1994 so I was also interested in the art of the other
Frontline States and South Africa. In the 80's when I first worked
with artists in Zambia I was called 'Madam' which I hated but things move on fast and that soon stopped. There have been great changes in Zambia and Southern Africa and
its art since then. At that time Zambian artists wanted to study at art
school but the few white people who bought African art wanted
intuitive and naïve art which they considered more 'authentic'. That
split between artists and among buyers could be seen in South African
art of the same time too. What I learnt from Zambian artists however,
is that they wanted to be equal among all artists. No artist wants to
be defined by their skin or for race to be part of the consideration
of their art. They don't want to make money from phoney 'authentic'
art but to make their own personal art.
This was my part of my installation about the significance of water to expatriate and African women.
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This is my portrait of an artist
from the inside – the inside of my skin. My flesh coloured not skin coloured inside is like everyone's inside.
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It complicates the world to be
simplistic about colour, class, race and people.
Skin, identity, gender and race are not fixed. My own family is mixed and unfixed. Humans, society, the world - they are always changing.
Tomorrow's world will not judge people by the colour of their skin but we will still be fighting exploitation, slavery and injustice and we will still be making art.
Tomorrow's world will not judge people by the colour of their skin but we will still be fighting exploitation, slavery and injustice and we will still be making art.
Look at these nuanced and powerful
paintings made by Bulelwa Madekurozwa.
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