"Growing up without an echo"

"Annalee Davis hanging her exhibition at CCA7"

"re/routed is a series of paintings, drawings and installation work created between 1994 and 2000. It is a cycle of work that began with large-scale canvas paintings of gaping wounds suggestive of societal divisions in small, post-independent, island cultures. The work then took a close look at the home and the family in an attempt to more clearly understand the origin of the chasms that created the wounds.

In the 1997 solo exhibition, the central work, (up)rooted - a small wooden house with 15' -30' sprawling roots - evoked notions of longing and belonging within the context of Caribbean people leaving and returning as they attempt to make their lives within the Caribbean, or between these island states and northern metropoles.

The works executed since my more permanent relocation to Trinidad, are a series of drawings and an installation work in progress that claim the knotty hurdles, not as an impasse, but as necessary routes to the self. Originating from a sense of being uprooted from the home and by the nation, to being connected within the self, re/routed suggests a journey of thresholds - of dis/connection, be/longing and a coming home to the self."

Annalee Davis

re/routed: Inward Maze, Outward Gaze.

Annalee Davis in her recent show re/routed, held at the CCA7 in Port of Spain, reviews and expands on themes of belonging and selfhood, with particular emphasis on the zones of discomfort. The exhibit spans work produced over a six year period (1994 to 2000) over which Davis explores from the point of origin, so to speak, of the Caribbean malaise.

An initial series of large scale canvas pieces establish the plantation division as the source of the original wound in which all the perceived class elements of her native Barbados are included. The pieces, charged with more colour than form, show silhouettes of plantation dwellings: the great house, the chattel houses and the "wall houses" are all there, overshadowed by what the artist projects as the unifying element of hurt in the form of a gaping red wound. (Wounded Innocence, Across All Boundaries & Roses and Thread, and Sugar Cane Sweeties).

Davis’ work contains a pervasive sense of domination of message over medium, for in these earlier pieces the work is less concerned with the refinements of detail in a technically powerful way. Nonetheless, the detail is there in another form. A close look at the last of what could be termed the "Plantation" series, Roses & Thread, Davis captures the cliched beauty of pink roses, perhaps mistakenly termed hothouse flowers, flatly pasted onto the tropical green growth of the plantation cultivation. The English rose becomes a symbol of one kind of plantation life, bred in a garden in which the natural growth of the land is powerfully dominated, alongside the significant effort of cultivation itself, weeds (and other undesirables) are kept out and the shrubs are pruned and force fed into a carefully manicured product. Yet Davis reminds us that the whole production comes equipped with its thorny branches, as they are placed here, not growing upwards as one would expect but unaturally downwards as would roots, attached at the base of the piece.

While pieces such as this must be contextualized as early Davis, which examine areas otherwise elaborated upon in academic and creative writing – they pave the way to understanding the progression towards the present-day concerns of the artist, the overriding effects of the divisions in Caribbean society: the sense of dislocation and loss. How can I identify with this place that will not acknowledge the thing I have in common with it – the hurt? I too am a product of the plantation and I bear the marks of this rigid unnatural system.

In oblique reference to Davis’ own plantocratic roots detractors have argued against the validity of her themes. The work calls for us to examine the production from within, asking ourselves, what is this place we call Caribbean, the maze from which we flee, turning our gaze outward to a world of otherness, the Caribbean, the ultimate the hybrid, adapting with consummate ease to his new world. What makes us Caribbean? This is the intent of Davis’ work.

In Raw Testimonies, Davis moves on to ask who we are – extending her idea of homestead to the notion of home, revealing the shape of the hurt in a juxtaposition of lithographic reproductions of twelve Barbadian students' written and drawn notations with Davis’ response to these texts and images in the form of linoleum cut images, printed on paper made from bagasse. The choice of material and subject matter reinforce the notion of the (sugar) plantation as founding/splintering element of the society since it is "like us, a by-product of the sugar industry".

Throughout these two series the malaise that is being probed is the house/homestead as the foundation for what we are or rather, what we are to become. This is particularly apparent in Raw Testimonies. The focus shifts to the household/home as backdrop to the hurt itself and the artist who is the instrument of reflection. Youngsters write in frank and open ways about aspects of their daily lives, some dysfunctional – single parenthood, alcoholism – and others, more reassuring, of supportive family life.

It becomes clear that the path of discovery for Davis begins with a search from within the confines of her own space. The representations of the plantation as economic centre, life centre, social centre in which the individual discovers herself, and whose whole existence is shaped within the framework of the plantation unit becomes the starting point for us as a society.

How then have we or are we to transform such a place? More importantly – a question which she begins to answer in the latter works – what do we transform it into?

The pieces are not only about the plantation or "the masochistic veneration of chains" as Derek Walcott put it in Another Life, but rather an explorative act to uncover why none of us feel like we belong here. Why, even if we want to be a Caribbean people does it not seem to want us? Davis’ two-sided sixteen-foot work on paper, (Contemporary Middle Passage (here and there) and the printed triptych, Memorias de un Exilado) take us to the next stage of our course. The middle passage, crossing more waters, to other islands/mainlands as migrant workers, whether as blue or white collar, in the continuous movements of tides, swelling populations to the ebb and flow of the job market and dreams of a better life in which one is not bound by pre-existing models of selfhood.

Two pieces from the interim period bear mention; an installation, (up)rooted and a polyptych, Winged Mind, Heart & Sole (both 1997). (up)rooted, invites us to reflect about our own associations with History and history and escaping history. In the installation the onlooker is invited to circumnavigate a path around the exposed roots stemming from the base of a small, blue wooden house. Visibly impressive in its dimension, the roots sprawl into a wide perimeter around the dwarfed wooden structure. Here we are thrust into a literal examination of our notions of home/house. Are we talking of that perennial staple of Caribbean life, uprootedness? We don’t know. The invitation is left open by the artist for the spectator/participant to decide.

Winged Mind, Heart & Sole in contrast seems to tender a specific invitation to escape the confines of one’s condition. A large hand sews on wings to images of a head, a pulsating heart and a foot. One can only speculate about the pain involved in the process of having wings attached in such a manner. But what cost the price of freedom and escape?

The most recent series shown by Davis in re/routed are in pencil on a backdrop of largely white surfaces with few elements of colour. Articulated close-ups of hands and body parts, the artist turns her gaze inward. Stigma, Trying to Find My Centre, Drinking My Own Milk, Letting Go and Touching the Void all capture the sense of dislocation of the self in an undefined space. Knots are drawn into and tied onto the pieces.

After the uprooting and re/routing of the previous studies portrayed in a chaos of colour and medium, a focus on the outer shell of home and an exploration of the artist’s universe into ladders and wings of flight, we find a stark asceticism in medium and tone. Davis, in her new environment, turns to herself to explore her place in life. There, self-reflectivity takes the fore and as artist, woman, womanartist, she takes the leap of faith beyond the plantation, the house, the island, into herself.

One of the pieces produced in this series, My Medals, recognises the trials of self-realization, an ownership of the difficult passages of negotiating the Caribbean space. The knots, bundles of joy/pain, literal ties that take on a symbolic value, come to be objects of pride to be displayed – trophies.

The installation, Growing up Without an Echo, initially set up in the main exhibit hall of the CCA7 space, later shown in the InterAmericas space, is a spiral unicursal pathway. The feature of this spiral, which Davis describes in its pre-christian role as having a therapeutic function, is that it is composed of many small knots of colourful fabric or as we might call them here in the Caribbean, georgie-bundles. On the way to the centre there are articles that symbolically mark stages typical of Caribbean life, the white Christening gown and bonnet of a baby, a small silver spoon, the recognizable school uniform of a girl child, a tea tray with cup and saucer. Notably none of these articles are pristine, the gown is embroidered with the words "Original Sin" in red thread, the spoon is tarnished, the uniform has knots and more embroidered messages, the cup and saucer are bound with knots of fabric. Davis underscores her message by adding these elements representative of religious and cultural hegemony pervading the Caribbean. Toward the centre of the spiral the bundles appear on the inside of miniature houses transparently made of screen wire and zinc roofing. At the heart of this spiral, a sculpted wooden figure stands next to a large rough stone on which rests a King James Version of the bible with the figure of an Hindu deity pasted on the cover. On the inside inserts of other theological persuasions have been added. Next to the book is poised a swizzle stick.

While the symbolism is rudimentary in some cases, powerful in others and loosely knotted together in yet others, the overriding invitation that Davis extends to her audience is to examine ourselves, our mixtures, the facts of our Caribbeanness. We are left to imagine what the bundles enfold.. Or we can imagine arrivals and departures associated with this readiness of portable belongings. The lesson of our History in school is a loosely patched quilt of unrecognizable place names and dates with faceless peoples. Davis invites us to look at ourselves and undertake our own journey into a fellow Caribbean’s vision of this place we call home.

Kamla Best

re/routed
August 22nd to September 16th 2000

Annalee Davis recently relocated to Trinidad and was one of the resident artists working out of the studios at CCA7 in our inaugural Artist in the Community, International Residency Programme. Her exhibition at CCA7 included works from ‘(up)rooted’, a solo exhibition held at the Art Foundry in Barbados in 1997. These works have been travelling over the past few years to exhibitions in Germany, France, Spain, the USA, Argentina, Puerto Rico and South Africa. Since moving to Trinidad, ‘(up)rooted’ became ‘re/routed’ and included new works created since her relocation and during her residency at CCA7.

re/routed was displayed in the Exhibition Space at CCA7 from August 22nd to September 16th, 2000.

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