Throughout history, exile has been a death sentence for most. It meant that someone was completely cut off from their support systems— familial and cultural. If one was able to physically survive their punishment, they risked death by heartbreak. Dante describes the pain of exile in The Divine Comedy:
“. . . You will leave everything you love most:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. You will know how salty
another’s bread tastes and how hard it
is to ascend and descend
another’s stairs . . .”
Paradiso XVII: 55-60
Dante’s sentiment is closest to the modern phenomenon of self-imposed exile. Each of the five artists in Reflections in Exile have made this choice and have one foot firmly planted here in the United States and one foot emotionally rooted across the ocean in their homeland’s soil. Personal memories intermingle with a removed but objective view of the political and social mayhem in their countries. Each artist’s work seduces us with a compelling combination of sorrow, poignancy and beauty in which concerns of social injustice such as war, disease, and poverty become physical evidence in their construction.
Normally, we think of our beds as a safe haven, an escape from the ills of the world, and at first glance, Ilona Anderson’s bed installation, Forced Removal, lives up to this expectation. The twin-sized bed with lace curtain as headboard and turned-down covers gives the appearance of this invented hope. However, upon closer inspection we see that the covers are disheveled and the candy-colors we saw from a distance crystallize into floral holsters and rubber pistols. Rose petals are strewn across the bed and the floor and bring to mind the simultaneous paradox of lining the bride’s path to the altar or throwing flowers on top of an open grave. On one of the two pillow cases, Anderson has delicately embroidered a gun that peeks out of a floral holster. On the other pillowcase, there are two pastel embroidered bullets and a smoky hole blown through from an actual gun shot. The use of paint cans to elevate the bed is based on a tradition people in South Africa have to ward off an evil spirit that resides under beds. In South Africa where people are ravaged by HIV/AIDS and daily violence, there is an attempt to live with some daily normalcy; either by delusion or denial. Anderson creates this dichotomy and throws us off balance by pulling us in with the disillusioned comfort of the bed and the candy-colored violence. Before we know it, it is too late. We have become witnesses and can’t ignore what may have occurred.
Khalid Kodi’s work is not only emotionally charged by its content but also by its physicality. On his clothesline hang clothes that are far from clean. They are crusty, appear to be stained with blood and the body, and dirt. Kodi has imprinted his clothes with the event like a memory is ingrained in our brains. He has recreated evidence that remains from gruesome crimes- torture, rape, and murder. These genocidal acts are beyond most of our imaginations. Because we are left with the empty, leftover clothing, we as the viewer become the body and we realize it could be any of us or our kin-any age, any gender. Kodi has given us a dire situation from Sudan and with his art we are obliged to acknowledge it and respond.
Often known only from an oral tradition, Ethiopian folklore informs the images in Ezra Wube’s art. These images are framed within the context of war and famine as well as by his exile experience in the United States. He is a storyteller although not in the Western sense. We do not know when the tale begins or ends and we seem to be caught in the middle with scenes overlapping. As humans, we tend to think that time happens in a linear order and in isolated moments. Several of Wube’s canvases are set up as horizontal bands and we are instinctively tempted to “read” them left to right. He dismantles this notion by having characters repeat throughout a canvas and with visual pointers leading us to the center. People migrate back and forth in Wube’s canvases, most with blank faces. Individuals fade away and we are struck with how one can be interchanged within the masses. We, as well as they, are never quite sure if they have arrived to the place they are headed to. As many figures face forward, there are as many facing back towards their homeland.
Wube’s mixed-media piece, Open, could be a self-portrait of displacement as the head is forever detached from its body. It floats in space and each time it is displayed, its meaning is transformed by the audience and the environment. The lock apparatus to the right of the head makes us wonder if it will open the door to the final destination or is it locked forcing the head to continue the search on its migratory path?
Salem Mekuria’s film, Ruptures, pays tribute to the Ethiopian Orthodox religion in its tri-part physical construction. We see three separate images move separately and simultaneously and realize that their organization is also a metaphor for time- past, present, and future. Like many ancient cultures, which have withstood foreign invaders, Ethiopia’s history co-exists with the present day right in front of our eyes. Mekuria lives in the United States but returns to Ethiopia twice a year and in a sense she is here and there at the same time. In her film, earth is monumental, as image and as symbol. We think of the devastating famine and how one is reclaimed to the earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the multiple screens, we see people coming and going and experience the sense of being uprooted with their meandering directions. When Mekuria brings the images into a single cohesive view, we come back to ourselves. Her work asks us to reflect on our own paths and we begin to imagine how we may be able to help others find a place of stability.
Zimbabwe’s political history has not been friendly to those with an adverse agenda to the ruling party and Chaz Maviyane-Davies left in 2000 in order to pursue his work abroad. The graphic images of Maviyane-Davies are strikingly beautiful. They are also strikingly disarming with their boldness and unembarrassed assertiveness. He uses a limited but effective color palette and very clear and direct compositions to guide our eyes. His images warn and prompt us to make an informed decision in a visual way so that we cannot avoid his confrontational intentionality. In Medals of Dishonour, we see a military jacket lapel. On the breast are pinned ribbons and medals that we automatically associate with heroism and leadership. They are symbolic of trust but become a ruse since the medals have been replaced by Maviyane-Davies with skulls. We realize that if we always assume what those in power say and do as being right, we risk the chance of becoming one of their victims.
With any exile comes longing, nostalgia, and a heightened sensitivity to one’s beginning influences. In the same way that a country’s borders are fluid, the work in Reflections in Exile… traverses physical and emotional boundaries and a more universal and global empathy is reached. We must realize that the work is made to recreate events and responses that are shocking and unimaginably horrible. At the same time, we can’t lose sight of the love and care that have gone into the construction of these recreations- which each mirror the artist’s own devotion to their home country.
Candice Smith Corby
Candice Smith Corby is Gallery Director at Cushing-Martin Gallery, Stonehill College and a member of South Shore Art Center’s exhibition committee.
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