Akima: Did you go to the exhibition at Castellani House?
Colleague: Yes, I did. I think it’s [more] worthwhile to have an exhibition on a collection of realistic paintings of Guyana. This should include flora, fauna, buildings, artefacts, etc. …
scenery
Akima: Wow! I’m gonna start one of my articles with this exchange.
Colleague: Okay
While my colleague’s response to the exhibition was unexpected, it was not altogether surprising. The exhibition, after all, comprised two tangentially related installations by two artists and three paintings from each to complete the exhibition. I immediately recognised that in addition to the subject matter, part of the disconnect was the installations themselves. The form of the principal works themselves.
He had walked into the exhibition space and been confronted in the largest of the three-partitioned spaces by lifesize approximations of the human form in scarlet, purposefully positioned to form a circle that was filled with a veritable maze of wire lines spiralling, wrapping, and meandering in space to a central point. The figures numbered 12.
What could this all mean? Rounding the corner to make sense of it all, he was confronted by what he may have recognised as altars positioned before paintings. Each painting was of a solitary figure. Three were obviously female, three males, and one was curiously indeterminate.
Each looked out of the picture plane (the flat surface) except one woman who matched the cradling gesture of her belly-with-child with a gaze of affection. The paintings numbered seven.
The altars numbered seven. Walking through the long space where the paintings and altars were and exiting from the opposite end from where he had entered, walking towards the third partitioned space he would have encountered paintings of mythical, otherworldly figures and images in geometric abstraction.
Nothing in the exhibition spoke to the vistas of our everyday realities. No tall coconut trees looming over quaint shingle-clad structures of yesteryear. No concrete edifices of modern living fronted by bougainvillaea or frangipani or hibiscus flowering trees. No kokers. No rice fields. No homages to the grandeur of the interior landscape. Instead, these images required quiet contemplation rather than quick reflection, memory, and recognition. The two principal works
‘The Scarlet Thread’ and ‘The Seven Orishas’ required attentive looking, contemplation, meditation, and investigation. Each was a door through which one was invited to enter for new vistas.
On one of the last days of the exhibition, I returned with a friend in tow. I intended to sit before
the twelve figures of The Scarlet Thread and indulge in a few moments of reflection while my friend experienced the exhibition. Sit I did. Reflect as I intended, I did not. I sat before the work alongside another who had seen the work weeks earlier and had travelled into the interior and
returned to see it before it was removed. She spoke and I mostly listened. She was deeply moved by the work. She appreciated the personal vistas it provoked.
Today as I write, The Scarlet Thread by Pekahiah James no longer exists. Its component parts can be viewed but not the completed work itself. The 12 life-sized figures occupy space in the artist’s home. But the work will never (ever) again exist precisely as it was displayed at the Castellani House from December 2022 to January of this year. While the figures may be used in the future (and I hope they will be), they will never be positioned in precisely the same fashion with the wire lines meandering, spiralling, and wrapping precisely as they first did. But this is the nature of installation art. Installation artworks are usually large-scale, oftentimes employ varied media, and may be made for a specific space. They may occupy space in a room or an entire room, may necessitate walking through the work to engage with it, or may limit the audience to walking around it to contemplate it. Some installation artworks also define the pathways of the audience. Ultimately, it should be noted that installation art aims to create a work that is experienced with as many senses as possible rather than only seen and often exist for the life of their exhibition.
Herein, lay the disconnect for my colleague. The work necessitated additional ways of viewing, of thinking about it. It necessitated a realisation of its temporality (relationship with time) and relating this aspect to potential meanings. It also required imaginative reconstructing. How were the figures made? How were they standing? How were the wire threads configured? What did the wire threads mean? How would the work differ if the figures were reoriented differently and what could those possible new formations and meanings be? What visceral sensations do the figures and movement around them evoke? As I write I am thinking about my favourite encounters. The names of some works come to mind; the names of others do not. Many of the artists are European. Some are North American, Asian, Middle Eastern, and only one is connected to Guyana. For all that memory blesses me with, I can still recall my excitement, my anxiety, my curiosity, and my wonderment as I walked through and around them.
Mike Nelson’s (b. 1964) The Coral Reef stands out. The unassuming door against the wall through which I entered, the sound of my feet as I walked, the echoes of others – men’s voices, women’s heels – the sound of a badly tuned transistor radio, the dimly lit rooms whose character changed without warning, barriers of chicken mesh rising above counters, and papers and magazine strewn about behind barriers. As I write, I wonder how much of my memory is real and how much I fabricated in those long minutes of experiencing this work over a decade and again four years ago. I felt transported but to where I did not know. Wherever it was, it was not ideal! Thoughts of Vietnam prisoners of war and stranded folks trying to contact the outside using antiquated radios return to me. But where was this ‘inside’ trying to reach the outside? My thoughts went far, to the havoc that can happen in dungeon spaces. I was alone in the space but not alone. Voices echoed. Feet echoed. Bodies suddenly appeared through doorways. Our eyes met and we passed each other without a spoken word.
Installation art aims to centre viewers and their experiences. It is visual art that is as much about the audience as it is about the work. It has a history in the world of art that dates to the 1960s and in Guyana perhaps only to the 2010s when I, enamoured and in receipt of a licence to create freely, made my early forays. Of course, the work was misunderstood.
Akima McPherson is a multimedia artist, art historian, and educator
