BmoreArt

Teresita Fernández contributes two equally stunning works that address the legacy of colonialism. The monumental “Fire (America)1,” comprising glazed ceramic tesserae, presents a night sky lit up by mesmerizing flames. A dramatic scene, the artist employs a handcrafted medium made from the earth itself, reinforcing the spiritual aspect of the land and its integral role in Native American beliefs. Fernández says of her work, “For me, landscape is about the history of people in places and how we position ourselves within those spaces.” The historical loss of control of the environment contrasts with the beauty of the image. Her other work, “Dark Earth (Astral Sea),” a black and white landscape, created with the charcoal of burned trees, refers to the title of the show. 

Firelei Báez’s brightly colored, complex oil paintings on printed canvas bring together myth and history to examine the long-term effects of colonization. She employs beauty to address generational trauma. In “Convex (recalibrating a blind spot)” and “Anacaona (destroy the beauty that has injured me)” she depicts the Ciquapa, a mythical female trickster of morally ambiguous character found in Dominican folklore. Báez represents the historical complexities of the Hispanic Caribbean, using mythology as a means of correcting the past and imagining a different future, fitting well within the themes of reimagining and reclaiming. In “Convex,” the Ciquapa figure covers a diagram of a New Orleans, Louisiana sugar refinery, with cascading blue water symbolizing the Middle Passage. This work is physically layered and layered with meaning—of enforced labor and theft of land but emphasizes the raw beauty of place. 

Several artists in the exhibition present their ideas less abstractly. Todd Gray creates narratives by combining photographs into large-scale assemblages. “Present History (1619)” refers to the arrival of enslaved Africans to American shores in 1619. It leans against the gallery wall, creating a contrast between the formal arrangement of the framed parts with the informal installation.

Through his complexly conceived and accumulated photographs Gray addresses the history of the slave trade, the diaspora, and the economic system of a new global market that saw people and lands as resources. Here he sets recognizable scenes of the natural landscapes of Africa against an image of a Western formal garden and includes a diagram-like image of a tall ship, referring to the Middle Passage. He is one of a group of artists who examine the past to understand the present.  

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who recently died, was a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation and raised on the Flathead Reservation. She is well known for using her artistic practice to address issues facing Native Americans, combining her knowledge of traditional indigenous art with modernism, specifically Abstract Expressionism.

She began her map series in 1992 to mark the 500th anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Bahamas. Her maps are about stolen lands. “Echo Map 1” is a collage with dripping paint and newspaper clippings that cover a clearly recognizable United States. But what is significant is that she replaces state names with words for “hello” in Spanish and French, commenting on colonization and erasure of Native American lives and lands. In this way, she turns the flag into something more than a modernist object (as in the work of Jasper Johns, for instance) or a patriotic symbol.  

Four sculptures by Yinka Shonibare express the artist’s growing concern for the environment; the Earth Kid series represents the elemental forces of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The artist explores the extreme effects of global climate change that he began in 2008 with the first “Globe Children.” The figures are neither Black nor white and wear Victorian dress made from the batik fabric associated with African textiles. He replaces their heads with globes that map the warming planet.

For the artist, the Victorian era represents an age of Western industrial expansion that not only colonized the African continent but also the planet’s resources. (You can listen to Shonibare speak about these issues in relation to the Earth Kid series here.) Although he does not believe politicians will change policy by seeing his work, he does think that art might start a debate that can change views which then will become political and hopefully transfer to policy. 

There are three videos in Black Earth Rising: Sky Hopinka’s “Mnemonics of Shape and Reason,” Alberta Whittle’s “from the forest to the concrete (to the forest)”, and Wangechi Mutu’s “Still from My Cave Call.” Each is stunning and explores the gorgeous and destructive aspects of nature. In Western art of the past, this combination was understood as a sublime state inspiring a kind of awe, but this image of nature depended upon depicting it within a very specific context. Instead, two of the artists, Hopinka and Whittle, look at the destructive power of Western Colonialism for their interpretation of nature’s beauty, setting up contrasts between cultures with the third, Mutu seeking a rebalance in our relationship with it.  

Hopinka, of the Ho-Chunk Nation/​Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington. His video “Mnemonics of Shape and Reason” employs memories of place and time to produce a visually compelling meditation on the relationship between spirituality, the devastation of colonization, and identity.  It is a complex overlaying of poetry, music, and image that displays the beauty of the natural world. Through a lyrical presentation, Hopinka explores the Native relationship to the natural world that the European settlement of North America worked hard to destroy. 

Alberta Whittle is a Barbadian Scottish artist whose practice crosses different media. Much of her work is about the legacy of European colonization and the resulting inequality. She calls attention to how climate change disproportionately affects communities of color which became even more clear in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian which devastated the Bahamas in 2019. In this video, “from the forest to the concrete (to the forest),” she meshes performance with footage of the cyclone’s destruction to draw attention to the hurricane’s catastrophic effects, hoping to inform those living in the United Kingdom where she now resides about the contrast between their relative comfort and that of other people around the globe. 

Wangechi Mutu’s “My Cave Call” can be found in the 1812 Spring house just outside of the BMA (not open in bad weather). She is a Kenyan-American artist who works in multiple disciplines, exploring a range of topics, including globalization, overconsumption, environmentalism, and femininity. This video is set in a field and a cave beneath Mount Suswa, considered a spiritual site in The Rift Valley of Kenya.  

Over time, Mutu has developed a panoply of mythical creatures and surreal landscapes based on legends from both Western and Eastern cultures. In this film, she features herself as a horned mythical creature who seeks wisdom in the holy cave. She includes details from Kenya’s past and present while the voice of an unseen child narrates. Mutu addresses our disconnection with the natural world. The  Neoclassical Spring house is a small Roman temple-like structure that contrasts with the dramatic and encompassing performance in the interior, a difference that is a metaphor for the entire exhibition where artists explore the myriad ways that colonization of the Americas has impacted the environment.

For my visit to the exhibit, I was lucky enough to attend a press opening in the galleries during which Eshun gave a tour, speaking eloquently about the premise for the show as well as commenting on individual works, a special experience. Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, spoke at the event and reiterated her written comments: “Whether one chooses to simply take in the splendor of the featured works or delve more deeply into the underlying contexts, I’m certain it will be an engaging experience.” 

Visitors can learn more by reading Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art, a book by Ekow Eshun with essays by Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Associate Professor of Art and Archeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, and Macarena Gómez-Barris, writer and scholar with a focus on queer ecologies and decolonial theory and praxis. Their areas of scholarship align with the thematic organization of the book: reckoning, reimagining, and reclaiming. While it is not a catalog, it does accompany the show, and copies are conveniently placed in the galleries for viewer study and available for purchase in the BMA gift store.

The premise for the exhibition is a consideration of the violent impact that colonization of the Americas has had on the environment as expressed through the ideas and vision of artists. Do not despair; there is joy too. The artists acknowledge that our current environmental crisis is serious and frightening, but overwhelmingly this exhibition presents ideas through monumental, visually stunning works, where the contrast between beauty and distress pushes the narrative forward.