Blog

Starving for Beauty

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:12:23 -0400

At a reception for a recent show of mine, a woman came up to me and said, "I know that you paint images from Africa, but how come you never paint starvation?" She knew that starvation was a big problem in Africa but didn't understand why she didn't see it portrayed in my work. The truth is, I do have some work that is very obviously about starvation, I just didn't happen to have any up at this show. But I tend, especially in my more recent work, to not depict those kinds of images very much. Because everyone already knows that people starve in Africa. In fact, it's the only thing many people know about Africa. So it does no good for me to repeat it in my art. What people don't understand are the more complex reasons that lay behind the starvation as well as the greater global consequences of neglecting such a need. They don't understand that it's much more complicated than just a lack of food. It's a weapon of mass destruction employed in conflicts that have deep political and ethnic roots. It's a result of mismanagement of aid and ineptitude on the part of those offering the aid. But ultimately, it's just one of the many symptoms of the greater ignorance of existence. We may know that people in Africa starve, but we don't know who those people are. So even if we feel sorry for them, such an abstract sympathy cannot accomplish anything.

One of my favorite artistic inspirations is the incomparable photojournalist, James Nachtwey, who has, indeed, depicted starvation as much as anyone. But his photographs are more than just a hungry child or an emaciated man. He shows his subjects in the contexts that have created those situations and exposes the detrimental effects of such tragedies on society as a whole. He refuses to let the viewers off the sympathetic hook too easily with a superficial, "Aww, that's too bad." He fores them to look more seriously at the hidden implications and draws them deeper into reality. And it is that kind of attitude towards his subject matter that I look to for inspiration. Fearlessness and brutal honesty yet sensitivity and a broad understanding of the subject.

It also doesn't do any good to simply point out the problem, or to even try to fix the problem, no matter what it is. There are actually a lot of people in the world that are willing to throw money at poverty, or food at hunger, or medicine at disease, but they never make the effort to understand the real causes. Why not try to create environments where those things never become problems in the first place? There is a Haitian proverb that says, "Don't wait until a person is drowning to teach them how to swim." (And this is where I start to sound like the true neo-hippie that I am) I believe that yes, beauty and tragedy both exist in abundance in places like Haiti, Mali, Uganda, and Sudan, but if we ever truly want the beauty to overcome the tragedy, then we must encourage those affected by the tragedy to search for the beauty in their own lives. And, ulimately, if we promote what is good, and beautiful, and creative, rather than just trying to fix what is horrible, and ugly, and destructive, then those things that are good will prevail. But if we simply continue to only try to fix the tragedies, then there's nothing to prevent them from happening again. Which is why art is such an important component in international and humanitarian aid work and why, it does, have the power to save the world. It all goes back to what Simaga Koulibaly told me while I was mud painting in Nara, Mali, on the edge of the Sahara desert, "Lee, as an artist, you have a power greater than that of any government official, judge, lawmaker, or religious leader to impact the lives of the people." That why I depict what I do, whether it's starvation, or something completely different. It all has the same goal in the bigger picture.

Deserving Existence 2

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:28:44 -0400

Haiti's been in the news a lot in the last few months. Just since I left in March, all the big news programs have covered the food riots, the forced resignation of the prime minister, and the unfortunate trend of eating dirt cookies for survival, plus Nightline aired a special investigation program on "how to buy a child in 10 days" in Port-au-Prince. And just a couple weeks ago, right before I made a short return trip, Haiti made the news again as one of the most popular musical groups in the country, Barikad Crew, lost 3 of its members in a tragic car accident. Sure, I may be more prone to pay attention to all of this news, but it seems with so much happening, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to avoid at least hearing some small bit of factual information about Haiti. Yet, I still frequently encounter people who have no idea what Haiti is or where it is or what is going on there.

When I mention to people that I work in Haiti, they more often than not assume that it's somewhere in Africa. They see the photos of black people living in impoverished conditions and, not knowing any better, they think that it must be in Africa. When I first decided to go to Haiti last year, a lot of people who knew me, but didn't know Haiti figured that it was in Africa, simply, I think, because they knew that I had always traveled and worked in Africa before. So, since they didn't know where Haiti was, and I was going there, it seemed reasonable that it must be in Africa. But it has been incomprehensible to me lately as I notice Haiti popping up more and more in the news, that people would still be so clueless about this nation that is just a few hundred miles of the shore of the US. If you mention any other Caribbean nation, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, even the Dominican Republic, and Americans will know that they're just south of us. They will probably even know someone who has spent their spring break there or taken a cruise there.

Even just this weekend, as I was promoting HAPI's products at a trade show, a woman came up to the booth and was looking at some items, so I pointed out to her that "all these items were made by a group of Haitian artisans," and she looked at me completely confidently and said, "Oh, so they come from South Africa." I'm sure I didn't hide the stunned look from my face very well. And it was really the same way when I went to Mali. I don't know how many times people said, "Oh, isn't that where the tsunami hit?" Or, "Isn't that a city in India?"

I don't expect everyone to be an expert at geography or international issues, but is it really too much to ask to just reserve a little space in their minds for places like Haiti? Especially Haiti, because it has such a history of (not so agreeable) relations with the US. But I guess, as long as we don't even recognize its existence, then we don't have to acknowledge the detrimental effects that those relations have had on the country and its people. Early in the 1800's, when Haiti first gained its independence, for decades, the US refused to recognize it as an actual nation, yet we continued to trade with them for sugar, rice, and other products. And we're essentially still doing the same thing today, pretending that we can't see them there, yet exploiting their labor and land for our own benefit.

And I think, that all of this is why I am attracted to Haiti as an artist. As a country, in this giant world, it is, and always has been, an outsider. A tiny little voice screaming in a crowd of people with headphones on. And what's the point of making art about something that everyone already knows and understands? Art is pointless if it doesn't communicate some greater truth that forces the viewers to look beyond themselves. And I, as an artist, am automatically an outsider of mainstream society myself, so a nation like Haiti, is a larger representation of such exclusion. So I identify with Haitians as outsiders and possibly see their struggle for recognition as similar to an artist's struggle for understanding.

This weekend, at that trade show, I had a couple of my paintings hanging in the booth near a large display of the Haitians' paintings, and one women came in and really loved the Haitian paintings. Then another woman that she was with pointed out my pieces and the first woman commented, "Well those are nice, but they're too realistic for me. I prefer outsider art." And while I appreciate her interest in my students' work, and I, by no means, expect everyone to like my art, I thought to myself, "someone on the inside needs to make art about the outsiders to show who they really are, otherwise they just get exploited as naive, uneducated neanderthals." Which, obviously, couldn't be more absurd. These painters have just as much talent as many people walking around the states with Masters of Arts degrees, they just haven't been invested in, they just haven't been given the opportunities. It's not naive or primitive, it's just early genius. It's hungry art. Made by other humans not that different from you or me. And that's the point of my artwork, to express the beauty in our collective humanity.

Deserving Existence

Fri, 30 May 2008 12:18:52 -0400

Near the end of my time in Haiti, I asked a good friend of mine, Jona Douge, who is one of my art students and a very talented painter himself, what he thought was the most important thing that I could tell people back in America about Haiti, and he simply requested, "just make sure that they don't forget we are here." This statement proved to me the very unfortunate reality that these people, like so many in the most neglected corners of the world, feel like they are forgettable. Centuries of being ignored has convinced them that the rest of the world at the least, doesn't care, but more likely doesn't even realize that they exist at all. And when the rest of the world is sending you that message, then it is easy to begin believing the possibility yourself, that you might not truly exist. You begin to feel as if the significance of your life on this earth has been eliminated by the poverty that you struggle in. When everyday, the majority of your time is spent walking miles just to retrieve some dirty water for your family to drink, then it is easy to believe that there is not a greater purpose for you. When hurricanes don't hesitate to destroy everything that matters in your life, then it seems possible that you, yourself, never mattered much.

A friend of mine who lived in northern Haiti for a short time recently told me a story about a gorgeous beach that was on the other side of a mountain from where he was. The beach was owned by a cruise company who would frequently take their passengers there, but they would always tell them that it was a "private island" because they didn't want to frighten the vacationers by telling them the truth that it was Haiti. They thought that they would find it much less beautiful if they knew they were basking in the sun on the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. These people were getting their tans and playing in the blue waves of the Caribbean with no clue that just on the other side of that mountain was over 8.5 million people living in unbearable poverty. For their own commercial benefit, this cruise company pretended that an entire nation did not exist.

But if there is one thing that I truly believe every human being on this planet truly deserves, it's existence. Every person deserves to know that their life has value beyond their own mind, their own flesh, and the tiny shack that they live in. So the goal of my artwork has become communicating the existence of those people who have become otherwise invisible through the world's ignorance. I intend to show that negligence cannot be justified when the people in my art are not all that different from you or me. There is beauty to be found in every fragment of the world and in the life of every person no matter who they are or where they are, as long as you are willing to open your eyes and acknowledge it. For Jona's sake, and so many others in this world like him who feel forgettable, I hope that my art inspires the viewer to recognize and forces them to remember.