My art is a story.
Often when I think about the many stories in the Caribbean, my mind automatically goes back to my study of post-colonial literatures in English at the CAPE level. I think about Kittian-British writer Caryl Phillips' Cambridge, and how he establishes a binary of stories - the story of Emily Cartwright's coming to the Caribbean and her prejudiced ignorance - which there is nothing innocent about versus the story of the slaves in the Caribbean and the epynonymous hero, Cambridge who suffers as a result of the inhumanity of slavery. Phillips seamlessly establishes the plantation divide. I think about Jamaican writer, Olive Senior in her poem, Meditation on Yellow \, highlighting the greed of the Europeans and the destruction of indigenous peoples through her witty language and charm. She establishes a cruel relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressor continues to hold onto Caribbean people through neo-colonial systems of control. And I think about my own story of living in a schizophrenic, barbaric nation. We ourselves write our own stories but what about those on the outside, silently judging. Jamaica is a single story of crime, rape, Rastafarianism and a people hoping to be equal - someday in some way. Yet, we restrict the freedom of ideas. We say no to those who don't support our political ideals; we say no to those who choose another sexual orientation; and we say no to those who try to teach us better. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche stated in her Ted Talk said in her lecture: "The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. . . . I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar." Reject the single story. When we do so, that is the key to appreciating our Caribbean culture. My art is a story of identity, othering and belonging.
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AUTHORMikhail Williams is a Jamaican mixed media artist and writer based in Kingston, Jamaica. His writing explores the issues of gender and race in the Caribbean. ARCHIVES
May 2017
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