• Latest
  • Trending
  • All
When Statues Die

When Statues Die

August 21, 2022
Supporting Ukraine Through Consumer Power: Creative Projects Aim to Keep the Economy Afloat

Supporting Ukraine Through Consumer Power: Creative Projects Aim to Keep the Economy Afloat

February 6, 2023
A Look Back at January 24th in Tennessee’s History: From Nashville’s Designation as Capital to Supreme Court Ruling on Death Penalty

A Look Back at January 24th in Tennessee’s History: From Nashville’s Designation as Capital to Supreme Court Ruling on Death Penalty

January 24, 2023
Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

January 19, 2023
Examining the Role of Pharmaceutical Marketing Agencies in Tennessee’s Healthcare System

Examining the Role of Pharmaceutical Marketing Agencies in Tennessee’s Healthcare System

January 4, 2023
Exploring the Unusual Applications of Big Data

Exploring the Unusual Applications of Big Data

January 2, 2023
SaaS on the market: a business to fall in love with

SaaS on the market: a business to fall in love with

December 26, 2022
El Salvador created a National Bitcoin Office

El Salvador created a National Bitcoin Office

December 26, 2022
Your Right to Vote Is Not Tied To A Political Party  

Your Right to Vote Is Not Tied To A Political Party  

September 1, 2022
The U.S. Needs More Electric School Buses

The U.S. Needs More Electric School Buses

September 1, 2022
Metro Arts Commission Appoints Daniel Phoenix Singh As Executive Director Singh Centers Strategic Leadership, Collaboration, and Equity

Metro Arts Commission Appoints Daniel Phoenix Singh As Executive Director Singh Centers Strategic Leadership, Collaboration, and Equity

September 1, 2022
Bridgestone Announces $550 Million Expansion And 380 New Manufacturing Jobs For Warren County, Tennessee Truck And Bus Radial Tire Plant

Bridgestone Announces $550 Million Expansion And 380 New Manufacturing Jobs For Warren County, Tennessee Truck And Bus Radial Tire Plant

September 1, 2022
Tennessee Tourism Outperforms the Nation With Record $24 Billion in Domestic Travel Spending in 2021

Tennessee Tourism Outperforms the Nation With Record $24 Billion in Domestic Travel Spending in 2021

September 1, 2022
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Local
  • National
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Release
Friday, March 24, 2023
  • Login
The Tennessee Digest
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Local
  • National
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Release
No Result
View All Result
The Tennessee Digest
No Result
View All Result
Home Politics

When Statues Die

by Carole C. Smith
August 21, 2022
in Politics
0
When Statues Die
491
SHARES
1.4k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By Oscar H. Blayton

In recent years, people have begun to spend more time contemplate the meaning and significance of statuary. Statues of perpetrators of Europe’s colonial expansion and racist legacies began to tumble in the United States and England as descendants of colonized and enslaved people of color brought attention to the human misery afflicted by those who likenesses dotted urban parks and courthouse lawns.

As statues of widely recognized racists such as Christopher Columbus were brought down from their pedestals, so too was the artwork venerating lesser-known racists such as the surgeon J. Marion Sims, known as the “father of modern gynecology.” He advanced his medical knowledge by performing surgery on enslaved women without the benefit of anesthesia. In 2018, his statue was removed from New York’s Central Park.

A great deal of attention also has been given to the statues of traitors who fought for the Confederacy. Their statues were erected to proclaim and maintain white supremacy throughout the southern United States. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least 114 Confederate monuments were removed from public spaces between 2019 and 2021.

But as we witness the removal of statues meant to glorify white supremacy and western culture, we need to go beyond removing toxic reminders of past evils. We need to understand that statuary is a tool, and as any tool, it can be used for good as well as evil.

Since humans first shaped images out of mud, clay or wood, their work has been a form of communication. Even to this day, every artist who creates a statue is trying to communicate something. Perhaps they are trying to communicate with a deity to appease a force greater than themselves. Or they are trying to communicate with other people, as was the case with the white supremacists who wanted Black people to know who had the power to control their lives. Or they are engaging in an exercise of self-expression, releasing an energy and an emotion from within themselves that they need to send out into the universe. But for whatever reason a statue is created, none is created within a sociocultural void.

Many museums, government buildings and other public and private places are filled with statuary. And in order to appreciate these works of art and understand what they are and what they are trying to say, we need to understand who made them, what the artist was trying to say and why.

An inquiry into the existential nature of any piece of sculpture and how it is situated in its culture may help us not only to understand that work of art and the culture that created it but also give us a deeper understanding of ourselves as well.

It took this nation more than 100 years to realize that Confederate statuary was a form of racist political communication that was so successful over time, it came to be viewed as a type of religious communication honoring nobility and sacrifice. But with a re-examination of the history of these markers of stone and bronze, Confederate statuary is widely denounced now as having been created as a form of hate speech, an understanding which led to their being removed from public view.

With the removal of these statues, their messages die with them.

But there is another way in which statues die. They die when they remain in view but are stripped of their meaning and context and the viewer has no inkling of what the artist was trying to communicate, or to whom.

Currently, an exhibit in Philadelphia at the Barnes Foundation explores, in part, African art in a sociocultural void seized by white collectors and Western museums. The exhibit, a five-screen black-and-white film installation titled, “Once Again … (Statues Never Die),” was curated by Isaac Julien, a brother who has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his artistic achievements.

The Barnes Foundation bears the name of Dr. Albert C. Barnes, its founder and art collector who began amassing African art in 1922, a time when there was very little Western interest in it. The protagonist of the film, however, is Alain Locke, who many claim to be the intellectual father of the Harlem Renaissance. The film focuses on the tension between Barnes and Locke. As the New York Times put it, “their exchanges encapsulated the sensitivities and inequities that surround the adoption of Black African art by the prevailing white culture, and the struggle by Black Americans to claim and use that heritage as their own.”

The tension portrayed between Barnes and Locke is not a new dynamic, as the film’s title hints. A short 1953 French film titled, “Statues Never Die,” focused on stolen African art brought to Western museums. It showed how this art was detached from its meaning within the culture in which it was created. This film put colonialism in such a bad light, a portion of it was banned in France until the 1960s.

Purposely, “Statues Never Die” omitted geographic, period and ethnic context of the art’s origin or meaning. In this way, the creators conveyed the idea of dead statues, ones that have lost their original significance and are no more than objects without meaning, much like unidentified corpses. “Statues Never Die” exposed how the cultures that created this art, and the celebration of the human experience by the African artists, was never examined by most Western collectors and museums.

We should learn from these two films and strive to understand the context within which statuary is created so we will be able to distinguish between images that are meant to celebrate the human spirit and those meant to demean and oppress.

The post When Statues Die appeared first on The thetennesseedigest.com.

Share196Tweet123Share49
Carole C. Smith

Carole C. Smith

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Metro Arts Commission Appoints Daniel Phoenix Singh As Executive Director Singh Centers Strategic Leadership, Collaboration, and Equity

Metro Arts Commission Appoints Daniel Phoenix Singh As Executive Director Singh Centers Strategic Leadership, Collaboration, and Equity

September 1, 2022
Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

January 19, 2023
“Concerns about CHIPS”

“Concerns about CHIPS”

August 8, 2022
How Student Debt Harms Black Borrowers’ Mental Health

How Student Debt Harms Black Borrowers’ Mental Health

0
TSU to Continue COVID Safety Protocols With Surge in Cases and Fall Semester Coming Soon

TSU to Continue COVID Safety Protocols With Surge in Cases and Fall Semester Coming Soon

0
MTSU Summer Stole Ceremony Honors Graduating Student Veterans 

MTSU Summer Stole Ceremony Honors Graduating Student Veterans 

0
Supporting Ukraine Through Consumer Power: Creative Projects Aim to Keep the Economy Afloat

Supporting Ukraine Through Consumer Power: Creative Projects Aim to Keep the Economy Afloat

February 6, 2023
A Look Back at January 24th in Tennessee’s History: From Nashville’s Designation as Capital to Supreme Court Ruling on Death Penalty

A Look Back at January 24th in Tennessee’s History: From Nashville’s Designation as Capital to Supreme Court Ruling on Death Penalty

January 24, 2023
Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

Discover Tennessee’s Top 10 Entertainment Hotspots

January 19, 2023
The Tennessee Digest

Copyright © thetennesseedigest.com

Navigate Site

  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Local
  • National
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Release

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Education
  • Lifestyle
  • Local
  • National
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Contact
  • Submit a News Release

Copyright © thetennesseedigest.com

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In