The Feminist Black Art Movement - Essay Example

Influences of Colonial and Postcolonial theories and discourse on Chila Kumari Burman's Art The feminist black art movement has been influenced by many artists throughout the course of history. It developed parallel to the Black Arts Movement, and it has had a great impact on the art of African-American women. There were two main events that established the foundations of the movement. The first was the publication of the Feminine Mystique (1963), which voiced the discrimination women faced. The second was the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which safeguarded women against sex discrimination (Farrington, 2005). Subsequently, the feminist artists felt more empowered and their works express the racist stereotypes and stigma that women faced. Organizations like Women in Revolution had worked to promote the rights of the women and encourage them to pursue arts. The history of the movement is very detailed, with the politics and gender relations that it entails requiring volumes of analysis. In order to comprehend the development of the feminist black art movement, it is necessary to analyze the origin of theoretical themes that will be discussed in the paper in relation to art. Since the movement is very vast, it has been touched upon briefly in order to understand the influences of colonial and postcolonial theories and discourse on the art of Chila Kumari Burman. The paper focuses on the early period of Imperialism, since the Burman was born in England, and is a second generation Indian immigrant. The effects of Colonialism were long-lasting. The impact spreads to all postcolonial countries, like African countries and India. However, it is not just confined o the people living there; the displaced individuals from the former colonial countries have also received a major brunt of the impact. Migrants were not treated justly after they had left postcolonial countries and had sought to start a new life in some other land. Either they had migrated for work opportunities, or for any other work, they were discriminated against and were not allowed to express themselves freely. Burman’s family was one of such families who migrated to the UK. Burman was born in Liverpool and grew up in England. Her studies in arts and printing have led her to produce some of the most inspiring pieces of art about women (Gallery 44, 2008). She did her MA in printing, and this type of art is reflective in most of her works. She has creatively deployed her academic skills and has produced numerous collages, films, photographs, and paintings. She uses color extensively and its use is depictive of her ancestral roots in India. The traditional color schemes that she has used are characteristic of Indian culture and media. The themes that Burman has used in her works can be traced back to their origin in postcolonial time, and the international political issues that she has addressed represent her activism for the feminist cause. She has duly portrayed issues such as identity, Diaspora, transnational and mixed culture in her works. However, these issues have been hidden tactfully under the purported colorful images of both Punjabi and British nature. The issues of identity and mixed culture are increasingly relevant to the colonial era. One important characteristic of postcolonial works is the element of hybridity, which results in a homogenized mix of the identities of the characters. Since there was a clash of cultures, the identity and cultural norms of the people do not purely encompass traits that are characteristic of one faction. In fact, identity and culture has emerged as a product of the essentialisms of the colonizer and the indigenous. Hence, postcolonial writers and artists have accentuated the hybridity of identity in their writings and have used effective language and imagery to depict and construe the characters and artistic themes. The combination of her identity as having drawn heavily from both Indian and Colonial culture is manifested clearly in her works. It has been seen that there are differences in the works of women and men who have migrated to a new land and have taken along their cultural and ethnic traditions with them. For men who have permanently relocated, public issues that have political significance in the contemporary world are commonly portrayed in their art. On the other hand, women artists tend to focus on more private issues such as family life. Burman herself portrayed issues personal to her in her art as well as political issues. Many of her works carry references and portray images of ice creams, lolly ice and cornets. This is representative of her private life since her father owned an ice cream van and sold ice creams. She did not have an affluent or bourgeois upbringing, and her art depicts the background that she came from: simple and plain. The simplicity of the memories that she held dear to her from her childhood are illustrated in her works. The cornets and ice creams, a nexus to her childhood, are repeatedly painted by her on her canvas, producing some of the personal art collections of her time. She drew her inspirations from her immediate blood relatives. His father’s ice cream van transcended to a more artistic theme in her work, and has depicted a play of both personal and public life in each brush’s stroke. Her project to make a model of her father’s ice cream van is not simply a memorial ode. Embedded in it are questions about identity that have been defused by amusing artifacts. She has also painted family portraits, and her representation of the cultures of her Punjabi parents embeds in itself the private bicultural life that she lived. She herself notes that she takes montages with all types of intricate details, from bindi to beads. She quotes, “I include things from my past like my cycling proficiency badge, or photos of the family or Bollywood stars like Shilpa Shetty - and then I photograph the montage and make it into a print” (BBC Home, 2008). The artist has used a number of female ornaments in her paintings. These objects are not confined to the South-Asian culture but also belong to the transnational heritage of countries outside South-Asia. I will attempt to understand the works and perceptions of Burmani through an analysis of the modern gender, race and postcolonial influences. This dialectic debate will encompass the ideologies of theorists like John Butler, Paul Gilroy, Edward Said and Simone De Beauvoir. Simone De Beauvoir is regarded by many as the founder of modern feminism. She wrote extensively on feminism and existentialism. Understanding the postcolonial influences on the art of Burman necessitates a brief overview of the works of literary and art figures like Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s works are yet more significant to understanding Burman because Beauvoir wrote in a time when India was at the height of emancipation and the colonial settlers were just starting to establish themselves. As highlighted in postcolonial writings, the Other self has often been used by Beauvoir to express her concerns regarding the role of women in a patriarchal setup. Like Beauvoir, the art of Burman is about the emancipation of the subject, the rights of the female body, intricate self-fashioning (Alexander, 2009). Bell Hooks however presents a different viewpoint to this debate. She focused on the nexus between race, gender and class. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Burman’s works can not be judged solely by keeping the works of Hooks and Beauvoir as a standard criteria. This is because these feminists were grew up in different cultural backgrounds, and hence reflected on different cultural issues. However, the essence of their works remains the same: women empowerment. The theme of Beauvoir works is centered on her looking for a place for her bicultural identity in the world. Critically analyzing Burman’s identity in the context of her self-portraits and her search for an individual identity opens up new doors for research. Paul Gilroy is a famous name in the circles of social sciences and humanities. He adheres to the point of view that racism, culture, nationality, ethnicity and cultural identity have gained increasing significance in the world today. With the transcendence of the postmodern era, these issues have become more pivotal to the anthropological and cultural values of humankind. With the refutation of a worldwide cultural narrative, debates such as the imperial against the colonial, the white against the black etc. have become a major highlight amongst scholars. As a result, these terms have become synergist to the search for an identity and have acquired a higher status than class differentials and socialist causes. Paul Gilroy is of the view that the multi-ethnic culture of Britain traces its origin back to the postcolonial roots and the Diaspora movement of migrants from countries ruled by Imperial powers. Gilroy observes that Diaspora plays an important role in the world today and the idea of Diaspora has gone “beyond its symbolic status as the fragmentary opposite of some imputed racial essence” (1995). It is this multi-cultural element inherent in British society that Burman so creatively explores in her works, as a way to understand and place her own identity in the cultural and historical context of the colonial and the modern era. Judith Butler is another writer who talked about hybridity of identity and deliberated upon the Other in her book Bodies That Matter. In her book, she raises the question of the discrimination faced by women and the problems they face as they are embroiled in a meshwork of constructivism and essentialism. She proposed the normative category as a means of understanding how the subject is made by defining it in terms of five categories. Once such a subject has been devised, however, there is an Other that dies not fall into the normative category. She talks about the constructivism of the society and how many factions regard the female body for their biological significance only. Butler reiterates throughout the book that the normative formations on to which materialistic differences are placed, and the repeated misidentification is the seminal issue through which feminist studies originate. Simone De Beauvoir wrote in her book, The Second Sex, that a woman is not born, but one becomes a woman (Tidd, 2009). This is suggestive of the Other hybrid identity that has emerged as a direct consequence of colonialism. Freud also talks about this hybridity in his works. He refers to women as the dark continent (Shohat, 2006). Beauvoir writes in the introduction of the book that “thus humanity is male, and man defines woman not in herself but as a relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being” (Arrighi, 2007). Although women have become more empowered today since the times of Beauvoir and Freud, there are still many gender issues that continue to surface time and again, especially in reference to cultural differences. It is also important to note the credibility of the information about racism and gender disparities in context of the Western historical knowledge; the implications of which affect Black women. Black women are consistently stereotyped on the basis of this knowledge. Hooks wrote primarily on the black feminist movement and important feminists in the US, but there are some references in his works to transnational feminist influences. This is buttressed by Gilroy as he states that gaining insight into the developments of the British requires study into how the feminist movement emerged in America. Gilroy states, “here too the lure of ethnic particularism and nationalism has provided an ever-present danger. But that narrowness of vision which is content with the merely national has also been challenged from within that black community by thinkers who were prepared to renounce the easy claims of African-American exceptionalism in favor of global, coalition politics in which anti-imperialism and anti-racism might be seen to interact if not fuse” (Morra & Smith, 2006). The reason for the relative similarities in the cultural issues that Burman and Hooks addressed is the fact that their works were formed during the same time period. Thus, despite the cultural differences in the nature of the issues across borders, and how countries have perceived and dealt with the problems of dislocation, migration and diasporic advancements, there has been a global shift in the attention of the governments towards gender and race over the past few decades. The cultural differences that have emerged due to geographical isolation and other sociological and anthropological factors have been the cause of increasing attention by many authors and artists. One such author is John Mcleod, whose works provide an insight into understanding these cultural differences. In his book Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis he gives an account of his encounters with the multiethnic culture of England. One of these encounters is taken from the experience of Patterson in 1955 just after the British had ended its imperialist hold. The second encounter is an account of the writer Gbadamosi from the 1990s. Patterson recalls that he was surprised to find such a culturally diverse community thriving in London; whereas Gbadamosi talks about how he found London full of varying shops, markets etc (McLeod, 2004). The main idea behind these descriptions is that both these people had experienced a new multi-cultural community compared to the ones they had witnessed in other parts of London. John Eade also talks about the multi-cultural community thriving in London in his book Placing London, From Imperial Capital Global City. London has become a hub for multi-cultural activity over time with the introduction of Pakistanis, West Indians, and Africans (Davis, 2005). Eade speaks of London generally, and the culture in London had pervaded far and wide to other parts of UK, even to the very city where Burman grew up; hence his works expound upon the nature of the cultural activity in London and the Britain in general. Consequently, his works are reflective of the cultural dilemmas that Burman brought up in her art. His works are also appropriate to Burman’s art because Burman went to London to study printing at the Slate School of Art. Eade notes that it is a direct repercussion of postcolonial Britain, the practice being rife in London particularly, that both the Asians and the Africans became easy targets for social abhorrence and racial politics. They were continually being stigmatized for their color and race. When Burman was exposed to such prejudices, she was propelled even further to the expression of her feminist activism and to understand her cultural identity. When comprehending the role of feminists like Burman, their personal as well as public activism must be considered. For Burman and people of her descent with a bicultural identity living in the UK, equalization not only meant that they were accepted by the society but also finding a place for their identity in the culture of the country. Europeans regarded and patriarchal figures did not give the women much regard and refused to recognize them as their equals, the attitude being more pronounced and intense for Asians and Blacks. Beauvoir had said that women were considered as a separate element, treated indifferently by their male counterparts when it came to providing them their rights. Facing such resistance, the art produced by these women is very deep and inspiring, accentuating the strength that they women had to stand undeterred in the face of criticism. She was not let down or discouraged by gestures of defiance (Eckstein, Korte & Pirker, 2008). Burman has also shown herself as a woman of strength, empowered and undeterred. Her portrait Arrow is a reflective summation of what Burman fought for. In the portrait, Burman has shown a woman with a weapon in her hand. The weapon is symbolic of masculinity; however Burman creates ambiguity by interspersing the image with vibrant colors. The paradoxes, that is, the colors hinting feminism while the weapon representing the raw macho man, marks the genius that Burman is. In another self-portrait, I am not mechanical, inkjet print 1991, is also an example of the paradox that Burman has so skillfully crafted and incorporated in her works. In I am not mechanical Burman shows an aristocratic and ideal male clothing. Concurrently she covers the hands and the face with henna. Henna is used by the women in the East and shows the feminist aspect of their culture. Burman emphasized the right to speak from beyond two cultures, standing for the Asian female by making a self-portrait of herself performing Shotokan, which is a Japanese martial art, in a sari (Ali, Kalra & Sayyid, 2008). Burman is a leading figure in the world of arts. Although she has Indian roots, she grew up largely under the British influence, and her education was primarily aristocratic. Therefore the need to adopt the in-between identity that combines both the Punjabi and British influences that she has had became pivotal to her. When she professional schooling and started producing political art, she was amongst the very few people who had ventured into that domain. Although Indian identity remains an intrinsic feature of her arts, she has also started targeting issues like gender disparities with an increased focus on identity and nationalism. Her specialize in printmaking and although the field has largely been ignored by artists earlier, Burman has broken from such stereotypes and have struggled to be accepted by the society. Appearance of artists like Anish Kapoor and Chila Kumari Burman is an indication of increased British Asian representation (English, 2006). Burman’s current art collection has been accrued over twenty years of hard work and experimentions in as assortment of print media like montages, photography etc. Burman draws inspiration from, and subsequently bases her works on, political imagery enshrouded in satire. Burman notes that this satire emerges from the hostile place that has developed in the gender and identity politics of a postcolonial, class-oriented and visually oversupplied UK. Burman has used the poetics of visual composition and arrangement and has expertly woven framing, layering and assemblage together. This has created a unique angle to her work. Burman reflects herself that in a maturing of receptivity and emotional response, that has been continually chiseled by application in practice, has caught the attention of the spectators and cause them to participate in a more detailed and comprehensive viewing of her works (Chila Kumari Burman, 2006). Reference List Alexander, M., 2009. Poetics of Dislocation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Ali, N., Kalra, V. S. & Sayyid, S., 2008. A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain. New York (NY): Columbia University Press. Arrighi, B. A., 2007. Understanding inequality: the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, and gender. 2nd ed. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. BBC Home, 2008. Artist Chila Kumari Burman. [Online] (Updated 11 August 2008) Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/content/articles/2008/04/30/north_west_chila_burman_s13_w10_feature.shtml [Accessed 4 June 2010]. Chila Kumari Burman, 2006. Chila Kumari Burman. [Online] Available at: http://www.chila-kumari-burman.co.uk/index2.htm [Accessed 4 June 2010]. Davis, G. V., 2005. Towards a transcultural future: literature and society in a 'post'-colonial world, Volume 2. New York (NY): Rodopi. Eckstein, L., Korte, B. & Pirker, E. U., 2008. Multi-ethnic Britain 2000+: new perspectives in literature, film and the arts. New York (NY): Rodopi. English, J. F., 2006. A concise companion to contemporary British fiction. Massachusetts (MA): Wiley-Blackwell. Farrington, L. E., 2005. Creating their own image: the history of African-American women artists. New York (NY): Oxford University Press US. Gallery 44, 2008. Chila Kumari Burman. [Online] (Updated 26 Aug 2008) Available at: http://www.gallery44database.org/artists/artist_info.php?artist_id=168 [Accessed 5 June 2010]. Gilroy, P., 1995. The black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. 6th ed. Harvard University Press. McLeod, J., 2004. Postcolonial London: rewriting the metropolis. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Morra, J. & Smith, M., 2006. Visual Culture: Experiences in visual culture Volume IV. New York (NY): Taylor & Francis. Shohat, E., 2006. Taboo memories, diasporic voices. Duke University Press. Tidd, U., 2009. Simone de Beauvoir. Reaktion Books. Read More