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Volume 3, No. 31 August 1, 2003 |
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A Review By Emeka Anonyuo and Margaret Betz Icons: Faces of our forebears look candidly and wide-eyed at us, their children. That is the first impression on entering “No Apartheid Anywhere,” a stunning show of Valerie Maynard’s acrylic paintings at The Beach Institute, 502 E. Harris St. On display until Aug. 23, the exhibition it is not to be missed for it actively promotes the reuniting of our fratricidal races and nations. If our purpose in art is to heal the planet, this art makes an important contribution for the viewer who makes a thoughtful approach and gives the time needed to take in their meaning. Yes, it does take time, not just to look at 50 substantial works, but to assess what they contain. The messages are rich with metaphor: Keys, heavy chains, razor blades, saw blades and catalytic converters are heads, facial traits (hair, mouth, head contours) and borders. When a razor blade is the mouth, the meaning seems clear, but when scores of blades converge on a thin human figure (covered in blades) who tries to fend them off, our emotional intelligence gives us the poignant situation here. It is easy to tell that each work was birthed by a mind that has been tortured for some time with the issues of humankind, especially the divisive forces that have kept one people apart from the other. Maynard pinpoints one of the more lethal issues and cries out, “No more apartheid anywhere.” Is this a request, an order, a command or simply an outburst by a frustrated soul? What inspired this array of frightening, even threatening, figures and scapes is not as submerged within the works as the statements that have been made which are wrapped in layers of metaphors that must be peeled back before the real meaning can be accessed, then assessed correctly. The synthesis of surrealist, “primitive” and metaphysical elements creates a foreboding atmosphere — one that thrills, chills and challenges the viewer to reach beyond the visual and touch the essence of this whole exercise. It is not the synthesis of rare cultural and artistic idioms nor the metaphorical deployment of known and unknown household and found objects that capture the imagination and arrest the attention, but the artist’s virtuosity and her dexterous manipulation of the principal issues of the hydra-headed monster, apartheid. Maynard’s message is delivered in a variety of parcels: some “double-coded” in the tradition of earlier African-American artists (and have to be decoded), others more in-your-face. This way, she ensures the understanding of a cross-section of the society. In some pieces, she employs extreme dramatic theatricality with the images at the verge of turbulence, one that addresses the intensity of the content. “No Apartheid Any-where” is designed to cause viewers to look deeply within themselves and to find the sensitivity and consciousness, positive towards building a world devoid of violence and strife. Viewers are invited to have a dialogue with each work, to enter and observe from “within,” and become one with it and its inhabitants, and to “see what they see and feel what they feel” and maybe, they will come out echoing Maynard’s cry, “No Apartheid Anywhere.” Anonyuo and Betz are art history professors. |
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