THE PROJECT
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ONYE OZUZU
These works began for me in an investigation of blackface minstrel performance in American history beginning in the 1800's and shifting and morphing into pop culture images that are with us to this day. Blackface performers were white and sometimes black actors, dancers and singers who painted their faces with black cork, exaggerating the eyes and mouth with red and white and performing in “Minstrel Shows”, an early predecessor to Vaudeville and the variety show. In these shows were a slick and fast-moving pastiche of skits, songs and dances, hugely popular acts whose currency were the racist and stereotypical projections of identity that proliferated across the boundary between white and black America. The series also derived from a concurrent line of inquiry investigating the rich mythology of Elegua (also known as Elegba, Eshu, Legba, Lucero….), the enigmatic and slippery trickster deity of the crossroads who hails from African spiritual traditions of the Kongo and Nigeria and has spread throughout the Diaspora in Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti etc. Elegua is alternately portrayed as a “little King”, a clown, a troublesome child, a “dirty old man”….his domain is the liminal spaces between worlds, life and death, mortals and immortals, good and evil. He is the messenger to the gods; he represents the uncertain, unpredictable nature of reality. His interactions with mankind often manifest in ironic, situations where lessons are learned through unexpected twists of fate-- revealing the fallacies in our fixed and self-centered perceptions. The early work, expressed through performance and visual image, through symbol and embodied action, bring the iconographies of the minstrel character, Sambo, and the African mythological character, Elegua, into conversation.
Michael and I met when I responded to a flood of outraged emails that came across my computer in 2004…responses to an apparent act of racist hate that took the form of a painting of several “minstrelized” depictions, Black, Latino, and Asian posted up on a major thoroughfare here in Boulder, opposite my son's elementary school. The painting announced the paltry numbers of these minorities represented in the Boulder community and encouraged “white people” to “enjoy”. The emails reached a fever pitch of outrage when it was discovered that the paintings were actually part of a graduate student's project and he was in fact black himself! I found the entire affair deeply entertaining on the one hand and interestingly evocative on the other. It touched on research that I had come across that pointed to early New York City performances of blackface where the provocation/exploitation of racist stereotypes disguised a tongue in cheek methodology for an ironic commentary on race. I had never heard race discussed in Boulder with such openness and passion before, and I've never heard it so discussed since. Michael's work may have been offensive, but it was also effective. This interested me.
Over the past 3 years of our gradually evolving collaboration Michael has offered me the opportunity of a deep and thoughtful reflection of my initial performance, “The Minstrel Mask”. I have had the rare opportunity to experience my own performance, performed for me. Through the medium of Michael's voice, the Mask that I dance shows herself on his canvases. She shows herself and her works: her interactions with the human histories, the cultural memories, and the emotional landscapes that she evokes, or perhaps, provokes. It is as if Michael allowed her, this dancer, into his interior, gave her permission to wander the landscape of his experience and witness the ironic juxtapositions that have marked his life as a bi-racial boy-child-man in America.
The collaboration has compelled me, to turn inward, to probe myself more deeply. In this current performance work, “Sambo's Sister”, I am following Michael's lead. Surrounded by the images of “The Minstrel Mask”….. I ask the Mask to accompany me on a journey into memory…
MICHAEL DIXON
I first experienced Onye Ozuzu's performance of the Minstrel Mask, at the Boulder Fringe Festival in 2005. This earlier rendition of the dance started slowly, and as its speed and intensity increased, it seemed as though she was trying to break free from the exterior identity that held her trapped beneath its blackness. Onye was trying to reclaim herself. I felt that this was a perfect metaphor for the struggles that I, and many others, have experienced as bi-racial people. I often say, “I am white around my black friends and black around my white friends,” to explain how I relate to the world. I find myself not quite fitting in amongst most racially identifiable groups. This is the space that I live in, and what I paint about in my work.
Onye had viewed some of my earlier work in which I was using the Sambo figure, blackface, and whiteface to talk about race and identity. We started a two-year dialog about how we could bring our similar imagery together. The dialog led to this current collaborative body of work, “Sambo Scratches His Navel and Watches His Crazy Sister.” Most of the imagery that I have used in the paintings comes from Onye's dance performance titled, "The Minstrel Mask" (2006). Our ideal goal is to have the viewer experience both the performance work and the 2D work in the same space. We desire to transform and push the boundaries of the traditional art experience for the viewer and create new possibilities for collaboration amongst disparate art disciplines.
I see this collaboration as a reflection on a shared history and a shared experience that many bi-racial people are intimately involved. Identity is a combination of how you see yourself and how others perceive you. When these two identities align, the self and the perceived, individuals rarely have to consider their identities. But, when these two identities are at odds, this is the space that many bi-racial people find themselves.
In choosing the imagery, I was interested in showing some sort of transformation. I was interested in the process of revealing and the process of covering up the self. This mask becomes the perceived, or imposed, identity. Onye's mask references an American historical tradition, that of the blackface minstrel. This tradition is based in oppression, disenfranchisement, marginalization, and racism. Out of this tradition comes the black sambo. Sambo is made up of the colors black, red, and white. Sambo is a derogatory caricature of a male black person. He can be found in early American kitch, cartoons, and children's toys. Another figure that Onye references is that of an Afro Carribean deity named ellegua. Ellegua's colors are also black and red. Ellegua comes from an African tradition. He is the keeper of the crossroads. He becomes a symbol of how being bi-racial is like having both feet in two different cultural worlds. Bi-racial people are also keepers of the crossroads. These current and historical icons are interwoven into a new character that inhabits the canvas space. This new character is both American and African; derogatory and empowering; white and black; new and old.
I have weaved my experiences into the drawings of the paintings and the titles. I have included a portrait of my mother, who raised me, and my father, who I have never met. They become symbols of two different worlds coming together. They are icons for a new group of people. They symbolize the present, the past, and the future.
To better understand the context of the work the following terms may be helpful:
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy , was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the American Civil War, African Americans in blackface. Minstrel shows portrayed and lampooned blacks in stereotypical and often disparaging ways: as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, joyous, and musical.
Blackface is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to take on the appearance of an archetype of American racism — that of the darky or coon . In the United States, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.
Sambo is a racial term for a person with mixed indigenous and African heritage in the Caribbean, also for a Black, or South Asian person in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is considered a racial slur in the US and UK but not in the Caribbean. Several origins of the term itself have been proposed, but it gained prominence through the children's book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, in 1898. It was the story of a boy named Sambo who outwitted a group of hungry tigers. The book contains many Caribbean references. Examples of "Sambo" as a common slave name can be found as far back as the 18th century.
In Yoruba mythology, Ellegua is an Orisha (spirit) associated with "opening the ways", or crossroads. Often depicted as a child or a small man, he is a playful and a trickster god. Santeria practitioners often have an Ellegua head behind their front door as he is said to protect the entryway and prevent harm from entering the dwelling. In the Ifá tradition practiced by the Babalawo, ellegua is used to open the way for the god of prophecy Orunmila. Ellegua's fills a similar role in Santeria as Papa Legba in Vodou.