One
hell of a monument
published: Sunday
| August 24, 2003
By Carolyn Cooper, Contributor
THE DONS and donettes of the Jamaican art establishment and their
enforcers in the media are testing the nation.
If you think
that selecting Laura Facey-Cooper's Redemption Song to grace Emancipation
Park is a monumental error it's because you are:
* A butu who
just can't appreciate High Art, after all, you've never visited
the Sistine Chapel
* A simple-minded
black racist who assumes that a white person can't tell your own
story
* A victim of
mental slavery who is ashamed of the black body in all its naked
glory
* A fundamentalist
Christian who, like Adam and Eve after the Fall, has discovered
your sinful nakedness
* An over-30
idler making a mountain out of a monument
* An intellectual
commissar (whatever that is)
* A grudgeful
dancehall queen who has been upstaged by a healthy-body female,
dressed (to puss back foot) in her birthday suit
* An insecure
male who is afraid that your sexual partner, whether male or female,
will see that you just don't measure up to the emancipated norm
* An envious
mad person who wants to know why nobody ever thought of making a
naked statue out of you and setting you up in your own park.
ON THE AUCTION
BLOCK
The right answer
is none of the above: Redemption Song fails the test set by the
National Design Competition for the Monuments of Emancipation Park.
The objective was "the designing of two monuments to commemorate
the Emancipation of our people, August 1, 1838." Emancipation,
in this context, is a quite specific historical event of overarching
national consequence. It is not a private matter.
Now, if you
trust your own judgement, you can see for yourself that this prize-winning
sculpture says absolutely nothing about the epic grandeur of the
battle of our ancestors to emancipate themselves and us, their children,
from the brutality of European slavery. In fact, the naked, blind,
truncated figures remind me of newly arrived enslaved Africans on
the auction block. A far cry from what they're supposed to represent.
FOLLOW FASHION
So how did Redemption
Song win the prize? With a lot of help it would seem: Edna Manley,
Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley and, more recently, Bedward and his healing
stream have all been recruited to give life and meaning to a limp
design (despite all that bronze). The Gleaner of August 1, 2002
reports that the jury described Redemption Song as the most truly
sculptural of the entries and admired the spiritual character of
the piece. The jury said that it deliberately resonated with the
nationalist iconography of works like Edna Manley's Negro Aroused,
which is its clear sculptural ancestor." In plain Jamaican,
it follow fashion. But a truly great monument to Emancipation should
be able to stand on its own. It shouldn't need to be propped up
by elaborate explanations. It should speak authoritatively for itself.
JAMAICAN
TAXPAYERS
I have no quarrel
with the artist. Mrs. Facey-Cooper has obviously done the best she
can. Her vision of emancipation flies high above the brutal details
that seem to preoccupy the victims of slavery. She is on another
plane: "My piece is not about ropes, chains or torture; I have
gone beyond that."
The problem,
though, is that a national monument to Emancipation, paid for by
Jamaican taxpayers, ought to reflect a grander, more thoughtful
vision of the subject than Mrs. Laura Facey-Cooper's personal angst:
"I want healing." I blame the distinguished panel of judges
entirely for failing to select an image that truly honours the spirit
of Emancipation and acknowledges the accomplishments of our ancestors.
If none of the entries met the bill, the competition should have
been reopened. We shouldn't have settled for what the judges seem
to be telling us is the best of a bad lot.
'SOMEBODY
GOT TO PAY'
What is totally
missing from Laura Facey-Cooper's sculpture is the notorious spirit
of rebellion and self-determination of the Jamaican people so powerfully
expressed, for example, in Bob Marley's Babylon System:
We refuse
to be What
you wanted us to be
We are what we are
That's the way it's going to be
If you don't know
You can't educate I
For no equal opportunity
Talking bout my freedom
People freedom and liberty
Yeah! We've been trodding on the winepress much too long
Rebel, rebel . . . We've been taken for granted much too long
Rebel, rebel
From the very day we left the shores
Of our father's land
We've been trampled on, oh no
Now we know everything, we got to rebel
Somebody got to pay for the work we've done
Rebel
Apesthetic
Instead
of rebellion, we've been given 'redemption' as the most fitting
monument to emancipation. What a piece of wickedness! It's really
the same old story of how and why Emancipation Day was taken off
the national calendar at Independence. The white and brown elite
and their black collaborators wanted to erase the memory of slavery
because it implicated them. So now we create an 'Emancipation
Park' and decorate it with an image that is an excellent example
of what one of our artists calls an 'apesthetic:' the artfully contrived
'Negro' as ape, unaroused, hands hanging impotently at the side,
waiting to be civilised.
LET THE PRIME
MINISTER KNOW
If you think
that the sculpture should be removed, send a post card to the Prime
Minister! A referendum of sorts. Let him know that Redemption Song
defaces Emancipation Park. If hundreds of thousands of cards are
sent to Jamaica House something will have to be done about the matter.
And what of its replacement and the other monument? The competition
called for two. The Emancipation Park Advisory Committee should
publish all the entries in the competition. We must insist on having
a say in the selection process. A national monument to Emancipation
is far too important to be left in the hands of a panel of experts,
out of touch with popular opinion.
* Carolyn
Cooper is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies University
of the
West Indies, Mona.
