‘Uncle Remus Redux: Contemporary Visions of How Time Goes by Turns’
GCCA Exhibit Celebrates Black History Month
The exhibition, “Uncle Remus Redux: Contemporary Visions of How Time Goes by Turns”, on display at the Greene County Council on the Arts Catskill Gallery Jan. 21 through Feb. 25, began as an idea to invite artists and writers to retell African American songs, folktales and stories for an exhibit celebrating January’s Black History month. An opening reception will be held at the GCCA, 398 Main St., Catskill on Jan. 21, 5 to 7 p.m.
Writer Sam Truitt agreed to curate the show and invited fellow poet, Horton as a collaborator. Horton’s experience as Editor in Chief at Tidal Basin Review pairs the voices and visions of writers’ and visual artists’ work on humanistic themes in beautifully designed editions from this Washington DC based publication. Truitt’s position as Managing Editor at Station Hill Press, the legendary publisher of avant garde art and literary books in Barrytown, NY, added extra potential, as these artists’ projects may form the core of a future anthology.
Truitt chose the Uncle Remus Br’er Rabbit stories as a centralizing theme. This group of projects is based on a series of seven books written in 1881 by journalist Joseph Chandler Harris’ in post-reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia. The fictional character Uncle Remus relates a collection of oral folklore written in the Gullah dialect of plantation slaves. Br’er Rabbit, the main character, is an amiable fellow, a trouble-maker and a trickster often pitted against Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear. In one memorable tale drawn from African folklore, Br’er Fox constructs a tar baby, dresses it and leaves the trap on the roadside. Br’er Rabbit is offended that the tar baby doesn’t answer his greeting, punches him and gets stuck, a cautionary tale referring to a problem that gets worse as one struggles with it.
“Gingerblack Man” series, acrylic on roofing paper by Donte’ K. Hayes.
In its time, Harris’ work was seen as a valuable account preserving African and African American oral tradition. The author credited three plantation slaves, Uncle George Terrell, Old Harbert, and Aunt Crissy in his later work, “On the Plantation” (1892). The stories inspired at least three feature films including Walt Disney’s “Song of the South” (1946), which was never released in its entirety to American audiences in the USA. The National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advised major newspapers that, “‘Song of the South’ unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.”
By the mid 20th century, the dialect and stereotypes in Harris’ books were seen as demeaning. In the spirit of this exhibit, Ralph Bakshi’s 1975 film “Coonskin” is a satire of the Disney film that adapts the Uncle Remus stories to a contemporary Harlem setting as well as “The Adventures of Brer Rabbit”, a 2006 direct-to video production featuring Hip-Hop influences.
“Uncle Remus Redux” is part of a two-part exhibition which includes “African American Stories”, a simultaneous exhibit of contemporary works in painting, sculpture, photography and multi-media forms by artists of color from the region curated by Euphema Robinson
The GCCA Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, contact 943-3400 or visit www.greenearts.org.
Redux Artists:
Aisha Cousins, “Brer Rabbit Day”, includes a rabbit sculpture and wrapped rabbit candies as artifacts from a fictional holiday remembering the main character of the Uncle Remus stories. Video interviews ask people on the street to comment on this apocryphal celebration.
Yinka Orafidiya’s “Tall Tale”, is a sculptural text made from a series of stackable, ceramic cylindrical forms. An original Uncle Remus story is inscribed in the clay and fired in a gas kiln adding dynamic flashing effects to enhance the printed text on the clay surface. Stacked in a column six to seven feet high the sculpture offers a physical depiction of a tall tale.
Joseph Pravda’s “Unmasking Which, Also, Tears Away the Face” is a multimedia presentation including music, literature (Uncle Remus stories) and film vignettes that compare the American and Roman Empire trajectories.
Alexandria Smith’s, triptych tale, “Why the Negro is Black”, borrows a title from the Uncle Remus tale exploring the notion of a mixed race/nonexistent race, cultural and sexual identity in paintings and drawings through the lens of childhood.
Harlan Lovestone’s collages, “Uncle Remus: This Way Black,” utilize drawings and photos inspired by the montage techniques in Terry Gilliam’s animated Monty Python introductions. The works reflect the stories of Uncle Remus satirizing Walt Disney’s “Song of the South”, 1970’s blacksploitation films and contemporary black culture.
Poet and recent visual artist, Sparrow will illustrate The Fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow using magic marker drawings, with autobiographical text.
Menoukha Case’s painted paper and cloth patchwork quilts feature dialogue and animal characters from the Uncle Remus stories to create visual poems. Deluge registers sustenance of old beliefs in water stories: the crawfish deluge sans Noah’s Ark; the African origins of baptism; inter-species communication. Candy Pullin’ takes the form of a Yoruba divining board on which animals and plants meet in ceremonial gathering to honor the undercurrent of women in Uncle Remus stories.
Donte’ K. Hayes’, “Gingerblack Man”, is an ongoing body of work interpreting the story and icon of the Gingerbread Man through the artist’s invented character the Gingerblack Man, a hybrid of Uncle Remus’ tar baby, and the 1875 folktale about an escaped cookie that is eventually eaten by a clever fox. Vividly painted on tar paper, the Gingerblack Man serves as the consciousness of African Americans. The artwork comments on the culture’s ability to shape identity on the basis of assumptions and accusations.
Randall Horton’s project interprets seven Uncle Remus stories through a political and social lens as a series of linked poems, reimagining the tales through renegade poetics disrupting and changing the dominant narrative. White words on a black page, Horton is experimenting with forms like the villanelle and the sonnet which constrict but, much like Br’er Rabbit and other Remus characters, the poem finds a way to free itself.
Sam Truitt’s, “RAT” references Uncle Remus’ tar baby as a three dimensional human form about the size of a five-year-old child made of chicken wire and surfaced with tar. The figure’s abdomen functions as a frame for newspaper excerpts describing a 1946 lynching in Georgia, an unsolved quadruple murder case that attracted national attention. Headphones are displayed on a stand next to the “tar baby” with rabbit ears attached – putting on the headphones, the listener “becomes” a rabbit. A repeating 5-second clip from Walt Disney’s 1946 Uncle Remus character sings “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” linked to a projection at the tar baby’s feet.
