Giving Voice Through Art
By Oscar Wailoo
July 18, 2006
Long before Canada proclaimed itself
a multicultural society, Guyana had already settled its
identity as a land of six peoples. The recently
enunciated Canadian ideal has not yet produced the
classic multicultural Canadian; whereas Guyana, which
has been at it much longer, has produced people of
remarkable mixtures and textures. Such a person is
Guyana-born Torontonian, Claire Carew.
Claire covers a fair part of Guyana’s
peoples. She is African, Arawak, European and bits and
pieces of others, and at once is fair to them all in her
appearance. Her features are like the brilliant “essays”
she does in paint and poetry. And her eyes are of a
quality that both penetrate and invite. Those
exceptional eyes are also the eyes of one of Toronto’s
finest artists.
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Carew has a remarkable
canvas on her living room wall. It is an
essay of powerful images of spirituality,
conquest, struggle, resistance,
self-assertion. Here is the struggle of the
aboriginal against conquest, there’s
the brown-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe,
here are John Carlos and Tommy Smith
with fists raised in Mexico, there is the
back of the Mexican maiden slowly
receding away, and at the center the
native face with clear eyes gazing back,
neither in defiance nor humility, but just
“returning the gaze” as Claire puts it. |
Scattered around her neat
semi-detached home in Toronto’s west end are paintings
ranging from rich to subdued tones, all commanding your
attention. There is a lot of power in these pictures,
belying the gentle Guyanese tone of Carew’s strongly
Guyanese accented words. But there is nothing “soft”
about Carew when she asserts, “As a woman you don’t have
too much freedom. So the least you can do is paint what
you want to paint. That’s when you can get your freedom.
Because in society a woman is always told what she ought
to be. So art is one way a human being can express
herself.”
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Then you know what she
means as you sense a pair of eyes looking at
you. Just to her left knee on the floor is a
picture of an aboriginal woman called
“The Eye Sees What The Mind Fears.”
Painted during the Oka crisis, when native
Canadians refused to have their ancestral
burial ground converted to a golf course,
the “Oka Woman’s” face does not threaten but
project a powerful dignity, commanding
immediate respect. And the eyes,
penetrating, projecting a strength that
defies all the years of oppression. Carew
said that once at an exhibit, a native
woman, impressed by the power of this Oka
Woman, sought her out, took her aside,
pressed sacred tobacco into her palm and
encouraged her to keep doing what she was
doing.
“I’ve always looked out
for the underdog and I paint what I feel
passionate about. You will see a lot of
aboriginal and black people in my paintings;
because I feel so often that our voices are
not heard. And when they are, they are often
stereotyped. So I always paint people of
colour in a positive light.” |
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Sometimes the light is so
positive that it fairly dazzles and blazes
and disturbs like the piece entitled “Amazon
Warrior-Blood Runs Deep.” If you are
running around with a bad conscience about
the historical abuse of aboriginal peoples
around the world, this richly coloured
Amazon warrior fastens onto you with eyes
askance. He is not threatening, he is not
bitter, but his eyes seem to say, “I saw
what you did and I’ve not forgotten.” So
striking is this piece that Carew said that
it was once on exhibit at a swanky eatery in
downtown Toronto and the patrons requested
it be removed because his eyes followed them
and disturbed their appetites.
If when gazing at her art
the viewer is disturbed by its power, moved
by its sensitivity, soothed by its calming
influence, then Carew can ask for no more,
even though she doesn’t always set out to
evoke such responses. |
But Carew does not doubt the critics
and reviewers who have seen her exhibits in galleries
across Canada, in Mexico, USA, at the Summer Olympics in
Athens, Greece, the UK, etc, and who agree on terms like
evocative, powerful, healing, revolutionary in
describing what they see in a typical Carew piece. It is
not surprising then that her pieces have found their way
onto socio-political magazine covers and posters, a
couple of sociology text books for college courses,
greeting cards and the walls of many an art
cognoscenti.
For the past seven years Carew has
brought that passion for art, living and political
action to the west end middle school where she is
teacher in visual arts, but we may soon begin to see
more of her as she considers taking a few years off
teaching to concentrate on her painting and poetry.
Until such time some of her pieces
can be seen on exhibit at
Angels
Gate Winery in Beamsville, Ontario. Or you can go to
Claire’s quite clever website,
www.clairecarew.com, to fill in the yawning gaps in
this all too brief cameo.
posted 19 September 2006
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Capitalism and the Ideal State:
Marcus Garvey / Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism
(Du Bois) /
Economic Emancipation
of Africa
Liberty and Empire
/
Money is Speech
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On Capitalism:
Noam Chomsky
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
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