art, exploration, and black queens

I went for a walk in the rain, and I got soaked to the skin. It's something that I haven't done for years - it's rarely ever warm enough to do that here. I'm sitting down to write this while the clothes I'm wearing dry. I could go and change, but inspiration struck while I was braving the elements. And to be honest, I quite like this exercise.

While I was on my walk, I started thinking about a project I did while in university. The class was a pretty intense exploration of the issues, thoughts, and environment of creating purposeful art. We explored topics such as space, identity, representation, and audience, and out of my entire seven years spent in full-time postsecondary education, it was the class that had the greatest shaping influence on my future work.

I was reminiscing about a class assignment where each student had to create an art project that would represent them. At the time, my biggest critique of the class was that the space it had created was too "safe". Everyone and their work was welcome, and no criticism for future development was ever uttered. It made it hard, as I expected a class that explored art and its issues to teach me how to improve, refine, and develop my ideas. However, I now know what it feels like to have a safe space in which to display, discuss, and explore my work, and I am forever grateful for that.

But I was thinking specifically about my self-representation. Initially, because of my training and education in mass communications, I had decided to brand myself, using advertising techniques to crystallise my identity into visuals I could display in the 15 minutes presentation time I had.

The image was a re-creation of the Queen of Spades, which I had chosen for several reasons. First, the symbology associated with the Queen made her (to me) the most intriguing character in a deck of cards. She's the only queen carrying arms, and the weapon I chose for me as QoS was the quill (the pen is mightier than the sword and all that jazz). As a black woman, I found the descriptor "Black Queen" incredibly apt, and spades are sexier than clubs.

In addition, I selected the phrase "cherchez la femme noire" as the caption for the image. Obviously the black woman thing again, but there's more to it. Searching for something implies a need or desire for it, and means that its whereabouts are unknown, creating a sense of mystery. The expression describes a technique in the card game Hearts, where the player seeks to collect the entire hearts suit (each card = 1 point), and the Queen of Spades (valued at a whopping 13 points). It's an all or nothing attempt to gain a lead in the game; players try to keep their scores to a minimum. As each player reaches 100 points, they leave the game, and the most efficient way of winning is cherchez-ing for the Queen of Spades, because the player who successfully pulls it off receives no points for that hand, while all other players receive 26 points, the value of all the point cards (all other cards have no point value). I liked that idea - find the black lady and win, giving yourself an advantage in the game, or life. Is that not what life is like for partners of black women?

In retrospect, the most interesting part of the image was that I had decided that a faceless black mannequin should represent me as the Queen. I had used the same mannequin in a different activist-art project examining my religious and cultural identity. I find it fascinating (and oh so true on many levels) that I chose a faceless mannequin to represent my Self.

I have never presented that artwork. For the class, I ended up presenting a slideshow of images that I had either manipulated or created that portrayed different aspects of my identity. I chose modern-day cartography to represent the geographical - I stress the modern because I have always been acutely aware of whether I was in a land of colonisers or colonised. I used my feet to represent the physical - my life has been shaped by movement, movement from one place to another, movement through dance. For culture, I used my name written in the script of my mother tongue, a visual I am in love with because it is the most beautiful script in the world. For identity, I symbolised the rebel in me with an image was of my hand curled into a fist, within a black leather motorcycle glove.

I think I need to revisit my original project, but to take it away from the branding aspect. I think it's time I undertake another exploration of Self. It was excruciatingly difficult back then, and I can't foresee it being any easier today.