Under the seventh sun:
Questions about history, culture, and belonging
Arts on Sunday
by Alim A Hosein
Stabroek News
June 16, 2002
Between 1838 - the end of the period of apprenticeship for the former slaves - and 1917, 240,000 East Indians came to Guyana under the system of indentureship.
They came to a country in which the ex-slaves had already begun moving to the capital city, Georgetown, establishing themselves on former estates which they had purchased, and settling on villages opened by the planters. They also encountered a sizeable population of Portuguese, who had begun arriving here also as indentured immigrants in 1835, and Chinese - other indentured immigrants - who had started coming in 1853. The East Indians came as the newest immigrants, and to a station at the lowest rung of the social ladder although many were able to change their economic status significantly in a relatively short time.
However, acceptance and understanding of East Indian culture has been harder to gain. Although the East Indians spread right across the Guyana coast and quickly grew into the largest ethnic group in the country - by the end of the 19th century they accounted for over 35% of the population and 30 years later (a little less than a century since they first arrived) they accounted for more than 40% of the population - aspects of their culture remain the object of derision to the westernised/westernising mainstream culture.
But the issue of integration into and relationship with the mainstream culture is not a simple one. Retention and practice of traditional or even syncretised forms by East Indians is seen as a deliberate move by them to remain separate from the rest of Guyanese culture, or to assert cultural superiority. On the other hand, East Indians see movements towards a melting pot/‘one people, one nation, one destiny’/‘all awe a waan’ culture in Guyana as a threat of dilution or even extinction, especially as such moves were most actively made by a political party with a larger political agenda.
There have been signs of change in recent times. East Indian writers - Cyril and David Dabydeen, Sasenarine Persaud, Harischandra Khemraj to name a few - have by force of numbers made themselves a presence in literature, though not in drama. There has been no such parallel efflorescence in the Fine Arts - the most centrally-controlled of all our arts - although East Indian artists have appeared from time to time. There are signs of the gap being bridged in music and to a less visible extent in dance. But the questions to be asked are whether it is that the forms of East Indian culture are being utilized without true appreciation of the substance and range of the culture, and what is the nature of the synthesis.
Moreover, perceptions of East Indian culture are still equated with the projections of the filmi world, while the other, older view of East Indians as money-hoarding, rich, basilect-creole-speaking rural dwellers is still seriously peddled (see, for example, Ken Danns’ portrayals of East Indians - and his defence of such - in various versions of his Awe Society, also the Pudduck character in Agree To Disagree, as the catch-all for all East Indians. The question is not one of integration/synthesis which could be achieved at the level of form or style and for reasons ranging from the commercial to the political, but one of understanding and acceptance.
The exhibition ‘Under The Seventh Sun’ - presented to coincide with an international conference ‘The Indian Disapora - The Global Village’ hosted by the University of Guyana Berbice Campus at Tain from May 20-25 in commemoration of the 164th year of the arrival of East Indians in Guyana - made a forceful point about the East Indian sensibility in Guyana and the place of East Indians in the local culture.
While the works of the featured artists Bernadette Persaud, Desmond Ali, Betsy Karim and Philbert Gajadhar addressed points of relevance to Guyana as well as the wider world, the exhibition made two strong points in two ways.
First, the artwork announced that there are artists in Guyana who draw strong inspiration from their Indian ancestry. Second, the various notes to the exhibition contained in the exhibition catalogue put the exhibition in a political context by reflecting the struggle of East Indian artists to be recognized, and claim that these artists reflect a wider East Indian struggle for recognition. Ameena Gafoor, Coordinator of The Arts Forum (organisers of the exhibition) in her Foreword to the exhibition puts it that "The subtleties of the unique stream of art produced by East Indians have been largely ignored and subsumed in the general art statement of Guyana and the Caribbean."
Bernadette Persaud, in her Curatorial Statement enlarges this when she notes that the work on show "not only reflects a rich ancestral legacy, but also engages current issues of race, identity, politics and the existential dilemmas and pain of our present situation."
The exhibition made no apologies in affirming an East Indian sensibility and asserting its value and distinctiveness. First, its organizers associated the exhibition with an occasion which consciously focused on East Indians and their history in Guyana.
Secondly, the exhibition was mounted in Berbice, an area of Guyana which, in an almost mythical way, has been strongly associated with East Indians and the whole superficial view of their economic power and cultural backwardness.
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'Under The Seventh Sun' confronted the viewer with a sustained, unabashed East Indianperception of the world. The exhibition is quite unlike any held recently in Guyana sincethe iconography is totally and distinctly sub-continental and middle-eastern, and the passionate presentation of feeling and cultural grounding is unmistakable.
Of the four artists on show, Desmond Ali was the least expected since from 1983 he has been making a name by exploring his indigenous American Indian heritage. Ali has also evolved a unique style of sculpture which he calls 'Mezo-American' and which he derived from the art of the ancient Central American Indians. In the current exhibition, Ali uses the same style to reflect the East Indian side of his heritage. This is the second exhibition in which he has displayed East Indian-themed work, the first being a small exhibition at the Indian Cultural Centre in June last year. There is a connection between Ali's Mezo-American and East Indian works, though, since in both his themes are creation and destruction. While his earlier work meditated on the destruction created by the Europeans in America, and the strengths and weaknesses of the Inca, Maya and Aztec civilizations, the current pieces focus on the age of Kali (Kaliyuga) - the age of destruction and terror (the "seventh sun" in the exhibition title reflects one of the ages of Kali). Ali sees in the Hindu cosmology a prediction of the current times of "degeneration and global terror; a dreadful predicament of violent destruction that threatens to consume all mankind."
Betsy Karim's pieces are far less disturbing. There are two things which mark her art: her interest in tracing ancestry, and her work in unusual media. In fact, her first exhibition in 1986 featured painting on glass, while her last exhibition in 1999 made use of maps and labels in tracing the dispersal of ancient peoples. In the Berbice exhibition, Karim exhibited 6 pots and 3 pieces of fabric work. Each piece is covered by intricate figures and replications representing diverse experiences and connections/resonances of the East Indian people - kalapani, Taj Mahal, the Lotus City - even the defeat of Alexander the Great at the Khyber Pass.
Karim's pots in particular resonate with multiple meanings: they represent artifacts and utensils used in everyday life, and are therefore part of the East Indian experience. On the other hand, the decorations raise them to the level of artwork to be admired for their beauty rather than their utility alone. Thirdly, as vessels, the pots give the sense of containing something: they suggest the encapsulation, preservation and conveying of history and culture. This adds an aura of sacredness and iconicity to the vessels.
In Bernadette Persaud's work, the ancestral Muslim and Hindu traditions serve to give a new perspective through which to envision the world, and through which to evaluate western culture. These ancestral values serve as countervailing values to the imperialistic western culture. The East Indian culture gives her a language and perspective by which to articulate a different vision of the world and political relations. In this way, the East Indian culture is rescued from mysticism and sentimentality and is used as a positive value.
Philbert Gajadhar's work also deals with historical fracture, dislocation, and survival. He sees Indo-Guyanese history as a "painful series of dislocations and relocations" which include indentureship, the split in the nationalist movement in Guyana, and "continued cultural neglect." His paintings therefore explore Guyanese East Indian history as a circularity, a continuing search for location in which even the future seems uncertain. His first painting The Arrival, is subtitled A Journey into Darkness, and the last of his 12 paintings on display - Journey Through the Darkness-The Exodus - shows a similar restlessness and uncertainty. But there is a glimpse of beauty and positive value too, in for example, the reverence and abundance of his Aarti.
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The contextualising of the exhibition within the political/cultural debate in Guyana was probably the major aspect of the show. However, 'Under The Seventh Sun' succeeded not because of its political nature, but because the work itself was of a very high standard - technically, artistically/imaginatively, intellectually. It had a corrective, vibrant and sometimes sarcastic energy. It was a very powerful, energetic exhibition which also offered positive values to balance the local and universal forces of oppression and feelings of dispossession. In fact, the exhibition is an extremely human one, reflecting strong feeling, uncertainty, pride, sarcasm, irony, beauty and wit. It showed that the artists had a very powerful and very assured perspective through which to articulate their ideas and feelings.
Politically, the exhibition showed that these East Indian artists sustain a feeling of dislocation and lack of accommodation as Guyanese. They see the movement from their original cultures as a wound which subsequent history in Guyana has not healed. In fact, the feeling is that their history in Guyana has been another crossing to a yet unclear destination.
But it would be a mistake to see the exhibition as revealing a sentimental longing for India. There is no sense in the exhibition of wishing a return to India or a return to some sentimentalized past golden age. Instead, the focus is firmly on the present condition, the view is from the current location, and the desire is accommodation within the present location.
What the ancestral heritage provides is a strong source of memory and completeness. It provides the artists with a complete world view and also allows them to create an artistic language. It gives them a language and perspective by which to articulate complex ideas about self, location, relationships, cosmology.
And the ancestral culture is unquestioned - none of the artists interrogate the value or relevance of their heritage to them in their contemporary life. Instead, they feel quite comfortable in using the ancestral religions, philosophies and history as the means by which they make sense of the world and evaluate it.
Neither is the exhibition narrowly ethnic or chauvinistic, since its theme is not power but struggle and survival, and the view is from the margin rather than from any centre of power. It is remarkable, that in these days, when some claim that because of change in political leadership East Indians now feel (in the words of these commentators) that, "We pon top," an exhibition by East Indian artists of strong feeling for their culture reveals quite the opposite.
This is an exhibition which should be mounted in Georgetown since its statements and arguments, and vital connections and imageries, deserve attention not only by a wider audience, but also by an audience which is accustomed, through the exhibitions at Castellani House and other exhibition venues, to a reigning sense of what Guyanese art is. Indeed, exhibitions featuring powerful use of ancestral iconography are usually visiting special exhibitions, and then the work is admired for its charm, and for giving us a glimpse of our ancestry. A good example is the Madhubani exhibition mounted by the Indian High Commission at Castellani House in February 2001. 'Under The Seventh Sun' has greater urgency because it brings ancestral iconography alive to address issues of vital concern to Guyana, and to comment on wider, international issues from a Guyanese perspective.
'Under The Seventh Sun' was an important intervention. Because of its particular nature and context, the exhibition raised questions about East Indian culture in Guyana, about Guyanese culture as a whole, and about the place of individual cultures within Guyanese nationalism. These are complex questions, which the exhibition provoked but cannot fully answer.
Given the complex nature of our society and history, 'Under The Seventh Sun' can only reflect a partial truth. But this is a truth which is strongly felt and needs to be considered.
It is like all the other partial truths which are proposed in any multi-ethnic society struggling for definition. The point to consider is whether the exhibition reflects a humanity which we cannot deny, and how to respond to that humanity.