Relationship home / land in the discourse of identity and self-image (2010)
by Alena Méndez Moreno (translated by Margaret Ann Harris)
Annalee Davis (1963) is a leading artist of Barbados. Her extensive work is difficult to define in a single thematic line because there are many issues and media through which it is expressed. However, its proposal on the concept of home, so dear and controversial to our Caribbean territories victims of colonization and neocolonialism, has caught my attention. Whether in recordings, installations, or painted panels with objects attached, Annalee Davis exposes the interesting relationship home /land ; that is, the term casa, home, and that of homeland, patria. It is a partnership and discourse on identity and self-image that the individual creates of our contexts. This, with the clear aim of making us think.
The main objective that I have is to analyze the artistic approach to the work of Annalee Davis from this perspective, i.e to discuss the relationship we can establish between home / homeland, home /identity, and elaborate on the potential socio-economic reasons (e.g. the sugar industry and tourism in these islands, migration) that especially in our context trigger these associations.
We Caribbean people are marked fundamentally by the experience of migration from the very formation of the space since the arrival of Europeans. The system of economic dependency and social metropolis that grew out of African slavery and then the semi-slavery of the Orientals, are elements that still affect us. Many Caribbean countries now depend economically and culturally on Europe and the United States as a neo-colonial condition. They are also extremely fragile environments in both socioeconomic and environmental issues.
As Annalee Davis herself states , the Caribbean can be considered the cradle of New World globalization, since, except for its indigenous population it is made up of residents who come from various ethnicities. Strongly influenced by migration, it has become a space of convergence, in one of the largest hybridization experiments in the world , for years romanced with the idea of being a single Caribbean, a single identity. But in practice, relations generated show up the space as fragmented along ethnic, racial, linguistic, cultural and, ultimately, historical lines.
From this perspective, Davis also shows how the notions of a culturally fragmented region on one hand together with the too often formulation of idyllic images of a playground for tourists on the other (derived from specific socio-economic issues), leading to a contradiction in our own identity. Therefore, the term related to country home in our context becomes an ambiguity. Teasing us, Davis asks: What is home? Where is it? Is home a category that talks more with our psychology that our reality? Then this concept acquires a true idealistic taste rather than a nostalgic one. As Colleen Lewis states, in the work of Annalee Davis home category transcends territorial boundaries, time and space becoming a present lived in our minds.
That our roots and traditions define us and mark the home (in a very broad sense) is how we conceive of how we individually and then socially project ourselves.
Thus, Davis' works presents us with a necessary debate based on questions like: What is the Caribbean?, Is the external image really us, what is the truth of our reality and how may we relate to the other from it?
The sugar industry is another element that has greatly impacted the lives of the people of Barbados, and in general the other Caribbean territories. The rise and depression in this industry are, especially in these contexts, closely related to the common theme of migration to the cities in the main. Migratory movements occur from the time of formation of the Caribbean had been introspective (between regions and from the Americas from Europe in colonial campaigns, from Africa as slave labor in Asia and then from slave-like conditions). Now the reverse: to the cities and / or world powers like the United States and European countries. The figures are alarming: we experience one of the highest rates of emigration of educated and skilled workforce in the world, a figure that in the case of Barbados is 63%. Sugar, which had been the main economic sector of Barbados from the colonial period, is in crisis in the mid-twentieth century, which led to a strong migratory movement in the 60's. This event still affects the lives of Barbadians and other Caribbean people in many regions. From this, Davis debates about the impact of this flow, how this back and forth can provoke subjectivity of our societies.
Works such as Rooted in Flight, Whirlwind and Raw Testimonies express these ideas. The estate, houses, birds and whirlpools are metaphors in the dialogue on these meanings that can take the term home for man, rather than Barbados, Caribbean.
The Installation (Up) rooted (1997) is formed from a small wooden house from which long roots in sight emerge. The house is suspended on roots while floating. The series responds clearly to the sense that the Caribbean is a region marked by emigration, which is manifested in the work in two ways. In other words, the roots are uprooted at the same time entrenching themselves, rising with birds as they penetrate the earth. And the immigrant, leaving everything behind, naturally created a home in the new reality of the hosts based from past experience for a needed sense of belonging. It occurs as a tension between two apparently conflicting elements that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, we could define as being and not being. Longing, memory and the human yearning to be part of a partnership, involving migrated people creates a space in which one is identified. For nothing must we see in concrete such space questions and measures. This home, represented in the house, must be understood as identity and memory that protects and comforts of the strangeness of a different environment whose reality until recently was completely foreign. Even on the representation of the roots , we may express ourselves as Sarah Clunis , symbolizing the long branches of the family tree, the arteries of the same body.
(up)rooted thus expresses the constantly rooted notions of home variables. As noted by the artist, the home is established from the experience of migration gradually becoming a sense of belonging within us, perhaps unconsciously, and that shapes our thinking and action, a notion that goes beyond and even in contrast with the idea of being physically anchored in the space. The proposal is to elaborate on the idea of the sense of belonging and identity, symbolized by elements such as the house, in communion with others that refer to this parity manifested in the rooting (roots) and the uprooting (birds).
This contradiction emerges from the very title of the series. The parentheses in (up)ironically refers to this duality which is expressed in the being of the immigrant.
This Being that is physically and culturally uprooted from their land by a process, say, of resistance and preservation of memory and identity, assimilating the new environmental conditions while recreating new and individual space from these influences and their experience. The home for the migrant is therefore in the maintenance of your spirit, culture, belief, tradition, and so on, that survive in the consciousness of concrete reality. No doubt this proposal will explore the tensions of polarized societies in the Caribbean Islands and complex migration patterns manifested in the ambivalent sense of belonging.
Sometimes, along with parts of the series (up) rooted small panels such as Finding the Centre (1997) and Memories of Exile (1998) also speak of this duality is perceived physically and psychologically in the emigrant. In Finding the Centre there is an allusion to a possible peace experienced in the "contemplation" of the home created inside.
In the case of Raw Testimonies (1997), for its creation, the author interviewed 150 students at basic, intermediate and advanced levels with a request to write and illustrate what they sensed as their home, emotionally and psychologically. From a selection, the work consists of widening and printing of 6 testimonials in lithograph along with pictures the artist made in bagasse in response to what was expressed in them. For Davis, , the home space functions as a kind of mirror for how we meet in the privacy of the home will reflect how we recognize ourselves in society. Some respondents said being part of very natural and simple while others expressed family dramas, challenging and hostile areas such as the so-called borrowed children (loaned children).
In Barbados, those children that remain in "borrowed" space are so called through having their parents leave for developed cities like New York to work, often in the field of services to send money home. This situation generates a number of now destroyed homes. Based on the hard evidence of this child, the artist presents a discarded house the fragments of which stand in an obvious stretched out hand gesture, thus expressing the desire of this young to have a unified and harmonious space. We might ask, by witnessing the testimony of this child, if the situations that confront borrowed children deserve so much effort, sacrifice and abandonment. Amazingly, many Caribbean immigrants are of the opinion that given the lack of opportunities at home, it is worth trying to try their luck in other regions, even at the risk of being coerced and exploited.
Other evidence relate to the idea of home as an expression of our identity, reflected in a house with roots that are carried in our hands since we wear our identity in the spirit. Other houses are shown in a small hand giving the sense of something valuable that deserves to be preserved, an nursing infant with an udder as one way of relating to maternity, a blow with a hammer illustrating the process of physical and psychological construction of the home that is described in one of testimonies and a final example inextricably linked to heart because similar to this organ, the home is a vital and energetic space for us as individuals.
These prints by Annalee Davis are made intentionally on bagasse, alluding to the impact the sugar industry has had in shaping the space from the colonial era and the social behavior that is currently provided by these established relationships and because their crisis in Barbados, from the second half of the twentieth century was one of the strongest determinants for migration to even more developed economic centers. Even the title of the book, Raw Testimonies can be understood in association with raw sugar or the sincere revelation of these anonymous and at the same time proper witnesses.
Often many of Davis’ pieces express a symbolic dimension of material. The use of organic objects in their creation as bagasse, palm or sand, strengthens this bridge between the old plantation system and tourism today and Caribbean identity rooted in memory, behavior and the sense of belonging beyond physical space.
Contemporary Middle Passage (here) and (there) (1997) is another work that also talks about the impact on our area of the sugar industry, the social relations from the institution of slavery generated and the economic crisis that recently hit Barbados leading to an intense migratory phenomenon.
This work is a unique piece, worked on from both sides, here and there. On one side (here) is seen a falling woman driven by a whirlwind and whose navel holds a house, and who is tied in turn to a Caribbean landscape presumably due to the presence of sea and palms. Moreover, a recurrent picture in other works is Davis's hand touching the void , which could be an allusion to the "nothing", concrete lack or hollow belief that dominates the “here.”
To the back (there), there is also a stream of air but, in contrast, this air lifts a woman with luggage and surrounded by birds, seems to wish to create for her a journey of hope. Constant symbolic elements appear such as rooted house and the whirlwind that rises when you fall, clearly identifiable in works such as Whirlwind.
The installation presents again the idea that the identity and aspirations of Caribbean people are linked to migration movements through its personal symbolism: the rooted house and palm in the here (aquí), as opposed to birds and the figure flying with suitcase in hand, expecting better opportunities in the there (allá). There is no doubt that this piece also reinforces the dual nature of outflows in our space.
Thus, being from time immemorial an area marked by migration, the rich and varied common ground of many ethnicities, we find the equal right to own a home whose physical and psychological with whose form we identify, essential. A place in the beings that we truly leave no assets and responsibility for our decisions and our home at the hands of a new group that threatens the social and environmental wellbeing of the Caribbean: tourists.
Accordingly, one of her most emblematic and problematic pieces speaks: Just Beyond My Imagination (2006-2007), a golf course scene is curiously the Caribbean itself. Made in the context of the World Cup Golf Championships (Barbados, December 2006), this piece expresses in the words of one Annalee Davis , how this small state (Barbados: 21x14 miles), and in conclusion the rest of the Caribbean, also becomes an international center of golf, the metaphor par excellence of an exclusive playground for the not for natives but for tourists.
The installation presents the Caribbean islands and which now become sand traps in a sea of green grass, simulating the golf courses. A flag is marked with the ironic title of the work and a small red carpet to install a playground warns members-only exclusive (Miembros Preferidos).
Perhaps most interesting would be to think about the absence of Haiti and Guyana in this idyllic vision of the Caribbean. Why are they consciously excluded? What aspects of bilateral relations between the Caribbean countries could lead to their exclusion from the delightful Caribbean promotional picture? Without a doubt, is being questioned as the idea of the Caribbean is born and presented as a single space, with a single identity. Is there really a feeling of equality, of belonging to this space? While still questioning these conceptions, however, there is a betrayal of a strain in relations between Barbados and countries such as Haiti and Guyana, which can find its possible cause in the discrimination emigrants from these countries they suffer in the territory Barbadian territory. This absence is therefore an explicit denunciation not only of the abuse these emigrants are subjected to, but the overall situation both socially and economically. To paraphrase Karl Marx, in the final instance, economic factors generate these and certain other behaviors and worldviews in society.
Annalee Davis thus recreates a tension announced from the title. Just Beyond My Imagination is but an ironic adaptation of the marketing slogan of the Tourism Bureau of Barbados: "BARBADOS - Just Beyond Your Imagination", which Davis reads as your imagination. On this basis, the book notes how the growing Caribbean tourist industry has developed playgrounds and recreational facilities for tourists, offering our best resources only to those who can afford it. The problem is limiting the progress of the local population that has restricted access to the enjoyment of these sites.
The natives are being robbed of the space gained after the long-awaited independence from the metropolis. From this we must ask if we own that space, why do we develop it for foreigners? Why the locals have no access to "our" best land and coasts? And moreover we have to posit that it’s an issue not exclusively Barbadian. Notwithstanding the responses, there’s a need to analyze the relationship of economic dependence on foreigners generated by the tourism industry in the Caribbean context, in the sense of identity, that is created unconsciously in native mentality through subordination with respect to the foreign visitor, tourists.
I would almost say that it is an effect unique to our regions and our economies to survive and depend on the tourism industry more than their fragile ecosystems could afford. Of course, we must not overlook that this mentality of subordination is in turn associated with more than 500 years of colonial domination. Hence, the need to refuse to be a perfect and simplistic golf course in favour of building a more united and well-connected space for one another. Today more than ever we need to feel rooted, owning a home of our own in all possible senses of the word, and soon there will be little room for natives as we are practically displaced from our best coastline and landscapes so that wealthy and / or foreign can have a nice day .
In general, all are pieces that reflect on Caribbean identity and image (both what we form from our inner self as those that as a society we act out) from the interesting, complex, contradictory and dynamic relationship home / land. Annalee Davis says all the time in their works need to adopt a serious attitude in building a vital place. She says that if we win the space (also a debatable issue as to the extent of a new form of both economic and cultural colonization with the current phenomenon of neo-liberal globalization) we also have full responsibility for its composition, because if colonial times were responsible for another country, once independence was achieved it became ours. I agree with Davis that sometimes the problem is based on decisions taken not in favor of our best interests.
Summarising, from the statements we can conclude that the artistic work of the Barbadian Annalee Davis is framed in the contemporary Caribbean, shown as a completely heterogeneous mosaic of identities and idiosyncrasies. Hers is a unique Caribbean in geographic space, but tempered by the various problems that come with technologically advanced and globalized world of today. It is precisely the socio-economic issues, the fragility of these ecosystems and foreign influences experienced by the Caribbean man, that are expressed in the special relationship home / land that inundates her work in all its expressions.
September 2010
Bibliografía:
Annalee Davis: (up)rooted. The Art Foundry, 23rd March - 20th May 1997. (Catálogo)
Annalee Davis: What Matters. (Catálogo)
Entrevista:
Entrevistado(a): Annalee Davis.
Entrevistador(es): Alena Méndez Moreno, María Prada Naida, Yudith Linares Suárez.
