Dublin, where I lived from 1999 to 2002, was a place full of contradictions. deeply religious yet worldly and arrogant, pious and conservative but drunkenly liberal, shockingly racist but disarmingly welcoming. At least, that's how it looked to me, a 15-year-old boy fresh from London.
Nothing was as it seemed. At school, my English teacher was also my basketball coach. He was great at both. In the classroom he instilled in us an awareness of the accuracy of poetry. He focused on a line and challenged us to break it down and consider its meter, musicality, rhythm, syntax, and its contribution to the poem as a whole. On the basketball court, he was equally precise about crossovers, how to stand, where to place your feet, and when to bounce the ball to send your opponent the wrong way. He demanded excellence from all of us, wherever he was.
I took as much of his teachings as I could, creating and expanding universes in my imagination and practicing, but in my penultimate year of school I developed asthma and couldn't play the games I loved. So I left the courtroom and gave what was left of me to my English class.
We were studying the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and it turned out that he was a contemporary of Robert Lowell and Marian Moore. She is an American who grew up in Nova Scotia, Worcester, Boston, and Florida. She, like me, could be called a nomadic “third culture child” (a term used to describe those who grew up in countries (and cultures) other than her parents' homeland).
Mónica de Miranda, “Sunrise” (detail), 2023 © Courtesy of Mónica de Miranda AND Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid
We were reading Bishop's poem “The Bight.” She published it in The New Yorker in 1949 with the subtitle “On My Birthday.” In it, she studies the bay at low tide. I can think of little to show for it: the “crumbling ribs of a maar,” the chicken wire, the flocks of pelicans crashing into the water “like a pickaxe.” At the end of the poem there is a suggestion that all this (her 36 lines vividly describing the ugly cove) is actually about her writing desk. The line, “This city is littered with old correspondence,” takes the poem from a purely literal description to a deep dive into her life and work, as if looking back on it all on her 38th birthday. elevating it to a vast and complex metaphor.
The last two lines of the poem speak to both concepts. “All the messy activity goes on / Terrible but cheerful.” Reading this poem, I never thought that I could express my inner thoughts and feelings by describing objects and scenes. Near the beginning of the poem, Bishop mentions Baudelaire by name, a French poet who believed deeply in the idea that the external material world can describe and correspond to a person's inner life. I was there.
Years later, in an effort to delve into my third-culture childhood and embrace the nomadic call within myself, I read The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. In this book, he argues that travelers can feel uneasy when isolated in unfamiliar landscapes, and that it is this sense of isolation and strangeness that allows them to reflect on their connections to their own identity. It explores the idea of being empowered. It will be possible.
I'm a poet and playwright, and I travel a lot for work. Whenever I'm traveling, when I'm not hunched over my laptop, I often find myself staring out the window for hours on end, thinking about myself and my connection to the passing landscape. Keep in mind what you are attracted to and think about why.
Germaine Francis, “Pleasant Land J, Samuel Johnson, and the Ghost of the Unrecognized Negro,” 2023
So this spring I put this into practice when I visited Soulscapes, an exhibition of landscape paintings at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London. I wandered from room to room, studying the works on display and searching for myself.
Curated by Lisa Anderson, Soulscapes is a large-scale survey that aims to expand and redefine the landscape genre. From paintings, photography, and film to textile art and collages by artists such as Harvin Anderson, Phoebe Boswell, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kimachi Donkor, Isaac Julien, Michael Armitage, Monica de Miranda, and Alberta Whittle. We collect contemporary art works in a variety of mediums, ranging from . . They are all from the African diaspora, and we are invited to understand the world through their eyes and through their special interests: belonging, memory, joy, and transformation. Concerns shaped by a complex history of colonialism, slavery, and immigration.
It wasn't until I stood in front of these eclectic, exploratory works that it dawned on me that everything I know and have ever thought about my relationship to landscape was inspired by white artists and thinkers. I thought. Until then, I had no idea that Elizabeth Bishop, Alain de Botton, and many other writers who shaped my thinking would have had a completely different relationship to their environment than I did. I think the more they traveled and had adventures, the more they were able to center themselves in their world, their landscape, in a way that I couldn't.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “Cassava Garden”, 2015 © Njideka Akunyili Crosby, artist, Victoria Miro, courtesy of David Zwirner, photo: Robert Glowacki
I am a first-generation immigrant born in Nigeria and brought up in Dublin and London, and I am troubled by Britain's hostile environmental policies and the nationalist and racist rhetoric that underpinned much of the debate over Brexit. I became an adult. And I have scars. Those difficult years created special scars that I wasn't aware of before. I didn't realize that I had never centered myself within the European landscape. In my mind's eye, I always seem off-center, absent-minded, and traveling to different places. Because I've never felt safe enough to stay still. I've built my career around travel because I feel safest when I'm on the move.
Soulscapes is full of photographs of black people in stillness, meditation, and rest. It brought about an amazing realization about this wound I carry. And it was healing, a glimpse of another way of life, a glimpse of who you could become if you had the courage to try. For example, Kimachi Mafafo's embroidery piece “An Unexpected Journey of Self-Discovery'' depicts a black woman emerging from a white muslin cocoon and gazing out at a field of lush flowers and leaves. Isaac Julien's “The Onyx Cave” features only black characters in stills from the film shot in a giant ice cave in Iceland. . . It stands small in the background.
Kimathi Mafafo, “An unexpected journey of self-discovery”, 2020 © Courtesy of Kimathi Mafafo/Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
But the piece that spoke to me most deeply was Monica de Miranda's “Sunrise,'' which I stood in front of, face-to-face, dumbfounded. It was a three-panel photograph depicting three black people standing on their knees with their backs to the vast ocean. deep in the water. Behind them, the horizon stretches as wide as the curve of the earth, and invisible waves rush towards them. They have a neutral facial expression, neither happy nor sad, relieved nor uncomfortable. They just exist.
But everything implied in the photo is clear. The Mediterranean migrant crisis, the Empire Windrush, the transatlantic slave trade, and the souls of black people thrown overboard. And perhaps also the Afrofuturist myth of Oshun, Oya, and Yemoja, the Drexiya and Yoruba water gods. As I stood in the gallery, it was as if all these people, spirits, and otherworldly beings were calling me to bear witness. And as I watched them, I began to see myself in the landscape.
'Soulscapes' is on view at Dulwich Picture Gallery until June 2nd
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