COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL of ART HISTORY Winter 2021

COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL of ART HISTORY

Winter 2021

The Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History January 2021 Volume 3, No. 1

A special thanks to Professor Barry Bergdoll and the Columbia Department of Art History and Archaeology for sponsoring this student publication. New York, New York Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief Noah Percy Yasemin Aykan

Designers Elizabeth Mullaney

Lead Editors Zehra Naqvi Noah Seeman Lilly Cao

Editor Kaya Alim Michael Coiro Jackie Chu Drey Carr Yuxin Chen Olivia Doyle Millie Felder Kaleigh McCormick Sophia Fung Sam Needleman Bri Schmidt Claire Wilson Special thanks to visual arts student and lead editor Lilly Cao, CC’22, for cover art, Skin I, 2020. Oil on canvas. An Editor’s Note

Dear Reader,

In a way, this journal has been a product of the year’s crises—our irst independent Spring Edition was nearly interrupted by the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic and this Winter Edition arrives amidst the irst round of vaccine distribution. he humanities are often characterized as cloistered within the ivory tower, but it seems this year has irreversibly punctured that insulation (or its illusion). As under- graduates, our staf has been displaced, and among our ranks are the frontline workers and economically disadvantaged students who have borne the brunt of this crisis. In this issue, we have decided to confront the moment’s signiicance rather than aspire for escapist normalcy. After months of lockdown and social distancing in New York, we decided for the irst time to include a theme in our call for papers: Art in Conine- ment. We asked a few questions: How are the arts afected by the medical, social, and economic crises which give rise to coninement? How are the arts enlisted in periods of personal or collective coninement? What aspects of coninement—restrictions on mobility, social isolation, architectural barriers—manifest in art? he irst among four extraordinary responses, Laurie Roark turns the academic lens towards vlogs. After a year lived through Zoom, Youtube, and Tiktok, Roark’s reading of Ann Hirsh’s “Scandalicious” ofers an examination of the uploaded videos we have relied on to preserve socialization and entertainment during coninement, arguing that the medium itself conines the artist to a display of disingenuous narcissism. In Questioning the Useful Corpse Aubrienne Krysiewicz- Bell summons the AIDS crisis in the work of David Wojnarowicz to interrogate how the visualization of a pandemic’s human toll can resist lattening subjects to ‘victims’ and mobilize for action. It is a pertinent quest; this year images of overrun emergency rooms, stacked coins, and even mass graves seemed to fail to deliver a sense of urgency to much of the American public. hough COVID gave rise to our theme, we would be remiss to overlook the ongoing crises of injustice that appeared long before 2020, those of systemic racism and colonialism. Zoë Hopkins combines Black feminist and postcolonial theory to analyze an assemblage of Wangechi Mutu, demonstrating how categories of identity—gender, race, Self, Other—conine marginalized bodies, and how Mutu’s work imagines liberatory alternatives. he conining nature of colonial identity is explored again in the context of Southeast Asia by Ashleigh Chow. She examines Lee Wen’s hyper-racialized performance, Yellow Man in Jour- ney of a Yellow Man #1 (1992), to suggest that his ironic and paradoxical self-presentation subverts the colonial gaze though it may appear to reproduce orientalist essentialization. In our varia section, Jennifer Yang assembles a collection of emerging contemporary artists—Wimo Ambala Bayang from Indone- sia, Yee I-Lann from Malaysia, Wawi Navarroza from the Philippines— to lay out how photography can challenge colonial legacies and fashion local post-colonial identities in a South-East Asia often overlooked by art historians. Finally, Calista Blanchard unsettles Christian and Pagan aesthetic divisions in the Caucuses, examining the pagan origins of 5th- century cross pillars in Georgian outdoor cathedrals. Her work contrib- utes to broader eforts to recover early Christianity’s continuity with the polytheistic past from later erasure. Together, this constellation of articles runs the gauntlet between ponderance and provocation, delivering an array of truly exciting undergraduate work. We hope this small intellectual exchange can ofer readers insight into both the signiicance and continuity of our moment.

Happy Reading,

Noah And Yasemin Table of Contents

Art in Conﬁnement

Scandalishious Narcissism 8 Laurie Roark he Boundaries of Intimacy in Internet Yale University ‘21 Video Performance

Cyborg Assemblage 21 Zoe Hopkins Wangechi Mutu and the Harvard University ‘23 Politics of Hybridity

Questioning the 32 Aubrienne Krysiewicz-Bell Useful Corpse Harvard University ‘23 Representing AIDS in the Work of David Wojnarowicz

Of ‘Yellow’ 40 Ashleigh Chow Performing Orientalisms and Cultural he Courtauld Institute of Art ‘21 Hybridity in Lee Wen’s “Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1”

Varia

Reimagining Southeast 60 Jennifer Yang Asian Postcoloniality University of Sydney ‘22 Local strategies of photographic representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines

Stone Trees and 77 Calista Blanchard Holy Forests Rutgers University—New Brunswick ‘21 An Investigation into the Pagan Origins of the Georgian Cross Pillar ART IN

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Among 2020’s remarkable images were the grids of painted circles that ﬁrst lined New York City’s Domino Park. As unfor- gettable signs of social distancing, they provide one sense of conﬁnement: the prohibition of interpersonal proximity. 8 Scandalishious Narcissism Scandalishious Narcissism h e Boundaries of Intimacy in Internet Video Performance Laurie Roark

Figure 1. “Scandalishious” YouTube channel in 2008, reconstructed screenshot via Net Art Anthology. Abstract In 2008, video performance artist Ann Hirsch—then a graduate student at Syracuse University—became interested in YouTube as a means to explore media and sexuality, and she began uploading videos on a channel called “Scandalishious,” in which she performed as a college freshman named Caroline. Hirsch’s performance took place entirely from her bedroom in Syracuse over an eighteen-month period, and in it, she adopted the conventions of young women’s internet videos, performing the intimacy of opening the girl’s bedroom to the public eye—exposing the interior. In the project, too, Hirsch relishes in the online attention she receives, and her performance of the vlog—the “camwhore”—is the natural development of video art’s Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 9

“aesthetics of narcissism,” as discussed by Rosalind Krauss. his essay explores “Scandalishious” and the dualism of intimacy and narcissism in Hirsch’s internet-based performance. YouTube was never the non-hegemonic media utopia that Hirsch envisioned, but instead, a platform literally encoded with algorithmic restrictions. Hirsch’s adoption of tropes for young women on the internet, with her simultaneous refusal to let them go unchallenged, serves as a critique of online space—which at irst blush can seem liberating for young women, but that ultimately proves destructive. n 1931, Virginia Woolf relected At the time, the platform’s Ion her success as a writer and slogan was “Broadcast Yourself,” artist in the now famous speech and that is what its users did. he “Professions for Women.” She en- vast majority of videos were unpol- couraged the young women in the ished and low-i, many recorded on audience to write, to create, telling webcams and uploaded directly from them “the room is your own, but it laptops sitting on desks in bedrooms. is still bare.”1 Since the advent of the Hirsch saw the site as a potential nuclear family, the girl’s bedroom means to explore media and sexual- has become an object of cultural ity, and she began uploading videos fascination. he bedroom is a site of on a channel called “Scandalishious,” privacy and play, a site of budding in which she performed as a college intellect and sexuality. he bedroom freshman named Caroline. Hirsch’s is where young girls make friends at performance took place entirely sleepovers, cover walls with drawings, from her bedroom in Syracuse over pen diaries, and, more recently, make an eighteen-month period, and in vlogs. Since the launch of YouTube it, she adopted the conventions of in 2005, teenage girls have locked young women’s internet videos, to the platform and uploaded book performing the intimacy of open- recommendations, dances, makeup ing the girl’s bedroom to the public tips, “story times,” and confession- eye—exposing the interior. In the als. Filmed in their bedrooms, these project, too, Hirsch relishes in the videos have made their private spaces online attention she receives, and public. In 2008, video performance her performance of the vlog—the artist Ann Hirsch—then a graduate “camwhore”—is the natural devel- student at Syracuse University—be- opment of video art’s “aesthetics of came interested in the videos girls narcissism,” as discussed by Rosalind and women were sharing on You- Krauss. his essay explores “Scandal- Tube. ishious” and the relationship between

1 Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women,” in Interiors, ed. Johanna Burton, Lynne Cooke, and Josiah McElheny (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Center for Cura- torial Studies, Bard College, 2012), 36. 10 Scandalishious Narcissism intimacy and narcissism in Hirsch’s directly on a webcam with instant internet-based performance feedback on the computer screen. In her 1976 essay, “Video: Seeing one’s image on a he Aesthetics of Narcissism,” Ro- computer screen, instantly and salind Krauss identiies the condi- ininitely replayable, is an addictive tion of “mirror-relection” in video narcissistic feedback loop. When an art. Unlike ilm, which had to be individual—artist or otherwise—sat- developed before it could be seen, urates a digital landscape with images the video cameras of the 1960s and of herself, she begins to re-project 1970s produced instant feedback, her subjectivity onto that mirror projecting its image onto a monitor object, altering her identity in the at the same time as it recorded. hus, process. Hirsch’s projection onto the the artist, ilming herself, could look Caroline character is, on its surface, at her own image in the monitor easy to critique. In fact, while Hirsch “re-projected with the immediacy of produced “Scandalishious” as a a mirror.”2 Krauss understood the graduate student, she received a great “mirror-relection” of the monitor to deal of criticism from her professors break the artist’s relationship to the and peers. Many of them saw the text—the objects external to her— performance as merely a girl making instead displacing the self, “trans- self-indulgent videos, searching for forming the performer’s subjectivity attention online. In response, Hirsch into another, mirror, object.”3 For defended her project by declaring Krauss, this displacement of the self that the performance “not only looks into a mirror object is the deinition like all the other videos of girls danc- of narcissism. Furthermore, that ing in their pants that you might video art only exists in replay—a ind on YouTube, it is that.”4 hen, reproduction in the media which it seems Hirsch was acting intention- veriies its existence as art—reiies ally self-indulgent within the inten- that narcissism. Krauss further asserts tionally narcissistic medium, using that video art becomes art only when internet video as a space to explore it is broadcast, while the self can only her own relationship to media and be understood through feedback. sexuality as a young woman. In an We can apply the same narcissistic interview with he Guardian, Hirsch feedback loop which Krauss describes explains that exploring her sexuality to the internet vlog, as it is ilmed on the internet—from the privacy

2 Rosalind Krauss, “Video: he Aesthetics of Narcissism,” October 1, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 52. 3 Krauss, “Video,” 54. 4 “Scandalishious,” in Net Art Anthology, ed. Rhizome staf (New York: New Mu- seum, 2018), https://anthology.rhizome.org/scandalishious. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 11 of her own bedroom, even as she image on the monitor. Her dancing projected it publicly—felt safer than is unpolished, unrehearsed. She bobs doing so in the oline world. hat her head, squishes her face, rules feeling of safety on the internet is her skirt, points her butt toward shared by many participants of the the screen, and rolls around on the online community.5 he level of ano- couch behind her, frequently lip- nymity and objectivity we feel with syncing to the love song, serenading our mirror-selves on the internet her anonymous audience. When disconnects that identity from our the song inishes, she approaches tangible, oline reality, afording us the screen to press a button to stop the freedom of exploration and play recording, and without a word or any in the digital space. ceremony, she signs of. In her un- he character of Caro- polished dance performance, Hirsch line, then, functioned as the site of is self-consciously both sexy and Hirsch’s exploration and play. Hirsch awkward, looking at her mirror-self performed as Caroline in more than in a narcissistic self-show, one that, a hundred videos uploaded to the in Krauss’s framework, becomes art “Scandalishious” YouTube channel only when broadcast. Taking You- (ig. 1). All the videos are recorded Tube’s “Broadcast Yourself” slogan on Hirsch’s laptop inside of her seriously, Hirsch found fertile ground Syracuse apartment, typically in her on which to turn her exploration of bedroom, though sometimes in the identity into performance art. kitchen or other interior rooms. She Aware of the status of her is always alone, recording herself performance in the online world, either dancing or talking in a high Hirsch uses the vlog format and pitched, valley accent to her audi- aesthetics to play directly into the ence through the webcam. In one tropes for young women online in of the most popular videos on the 2008. Studying video art in graduate “Scandalishious” channel with nearly school, Hirsch modeled early video 150,000 views, “caroline + bon- artists who countered hegemonic nie tyler,” Hirsch dances to Bonnie media. Hirsch envisioned You- Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Tube as a kind of non-hierarchical, (ig. 2).6 For the duration of the utopian media-sharing platform, ive-minute, forty-ive-second video, where artists and other individu- Hirsch dances in front of her web- als (particularly women and people cam, frequently checking her own of color) could freely share work in

5 Mikhel Proulx, “Protocol and Performativity,” Performance Research 21, no. 5 (2016): 114, https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1224341. 6 Ann Hirsch, “caroline + bonnie tyler,” YouTube video, 5:49, Posted Feb. 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2wUbfhYlw. 12 Scandalishious Narcissism a “many-to-many media mode.”7 ous,” Hirsch responded to trends on Instead, Hirsch found that women YouTube, mirroring the format of on YouTube, rather than creating videos created in earnest by other freely, were recreating the roles they young women. Frequently, too, she already knew, projecting a version invented emotions to elicit responses of sexiness—already embedded in from her viewers. At the same time, hegemonic culture—onto the mirror Hirsch felt the project had genuine objects of their screens. Imitating emotional value for her as an indi- the tropes that women reenacted in vidual and as an artist. As previously their videos, Hirsch hoped to reveal stated, for Hirsch, “Scandalishious” the awkwardness of that imitation, not only looked like what it was, it thus breaking down “the artiice of was that. he performance, in all its sexiness itself.”8 tensions, enabled a kind of intimacy Hirsch sought to expose that between subject and object as the artiice by breaking down a dichoto- artist explored her own identity. my between the two types of videos Sitting in the intimacy of she noticed that young women on her own bedroom, Hirsch dwells in YouTube were producing. he irst the interior. he genre of the interior were videos in which women talked, has been referred to by Walter Ben- allowing their faces to be seen and jamin as “the asylum of art,” a scene their identities known by the audi- rich for psychological probing.10 In ence. he others were “young faceless the interior, we are concerned with women” who danced for the camera, the private individual and the traces usually in a sexually provocative way, of her dwelling, particularly objects, while hiding their identities.9 Hirsch which leave behind the marks of her sought to create a persona in Caro- being there. “Scandalishious” gives line who combined those two tropes, a limited view into the objects of allowing herself at once the vulner- Caroline’s interior. In various videos, ability of being seen as a person and we see a red couch, a bed, and a as a sexual being, opening herself up closet full of clothes. Benjamin’s to the voyeurism of a largely anony- methodology can be closely applied mous audience. On “Scandalishi- to Hirsch’s videos, dwelling on the

7 “Ann Hirsch on the art project that invaded her private life,” he Start podcast from he Guardian, produced by Eva Krysiak, Feb. 2018, https://www.theguardian. com/culture/audio/2018/feb/08/ann-hirsch-art-online-youtube-scandalishious-the- start-podcast. 8 “Ann Hirsch,” he Start. 9 “Ann Hirsch,” he Start. 10 Walter Benjamin, “Louis Phillippe, or the Interior” in he Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA and London: he Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 9. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 13

Figure 2. “caroline + bonnie tyler,” You- Tube, screenshot via author.

Figure 3. Grid of response videos to “Scandalishious,” via Net Art Anthology. 14 Scandalishious Narcissism

Figure 4. “LETTERS TO AN INTERNET WHORE,” YouTube, screenshot via author.

Figure 5. “CAROLINE’S OFFICIAL GOODBYE VIDEO,” YouTube, screenshot via author. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 15 interior as a space of psychological responses to “Scandalishious” have openness and vulnerability. Hirsch been archived in the Net Art Anthol- has said that Syracuse felt like a “very ogy.13 he videos fall into three main lonely, sad, cold, desolate place,” and categories: teenage girls who admire because of that, instead of making and seek to emulate Caroline and her art out in the world, she retreated dancing; men who sexualize Caro- inward, staying inside to make videos line, compliment her on her looks, on the internet.11 Alone in her apart- and request certain dances; and hate ment, Hirsch revealed her private comments, most from young men, bedroom to an audience of anony- who criticize Caroline for being self- mous strangers online, and while she obsessed, untalented, and attention- was performing as a character, this seeking—in the online slang of the exposure made her vulnerable. Due period, a “camwhore” (ig. 3). he to this vulnerability, the performance gendered nature of these three reac- of Caroline frequently felt to Hirsch tions is unsurprising, and it conirms like a genuine expression of her own Hirsch’s critique of and interest in bottled emotions.12 In that way, the YouTube as a gendered space. private safety of Hirsch’s performance In a video uploaded in De- enabled an intimate authenticity cember 2008, “LETTERS TO AN between the artist and the artwork, INTERNET WHORE,” Hirsch, as despite her deliberate manipulation Caroline, addresses and responds to of an audience who did not know Caroline’s “fan mail” from viewers of she was performing. Scandalishious (ig. 4).14 Caroline, Within months, “Scandal- sitting on a chair in front of a wallpa- ishious” began to gather an audience. pered background and speaking in a Hirsch received immediate external high, bubbly voice, opens by encour- responses to her performance, either aging “fun and crazy” letters from her in comments, private messages, fans before focusing on the screen of or response videos. Increasingly, her laptop—where she is also record- Hirsch felt a community forming ing herself—to read her YouTube around Caroline, and that commu- messages. She then begins reading a nity became a part of the project. letter from a fan named Kevin, who Hirsch herself became embedded makes explicit and detailed requests in this online world as she engaged of Caroline, calling her dancing with Caroline’s responses. Dozens of “erotic” and asking her to wear “tight

11 “Ann Hirsch,” he Start. 12 “Ann Hirsch,” he Start. 13 “Scandalishious,” in Net Art Anthology. 14 Ann Hirsch, “LETTERS TO AN INTERNET WHORE,” You- Tube video, 4:29, Posted December 2008, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kmlU4qaKl40&t=2s. 16 Scandalishious Narcissism skinny jeans” and “rub [her] butt se- and that she is “really making a ductively” on camera. Caroline reads diference…really doing something the letter in a deadpan voice, but her right” by expressing who she “truly voice rises again when she inishes, [is].” he irony is, of course, that turning her head slightly and break- Caroline is a performance, not an au- ing her gaze with the monitor to thentic person. In this video, Hirsch look directly into the camera and ad- is concerned with her responses on dress Kevin. She thanks him for his one level, and with questions of request, calls him “really sweet,” but authenticity on the other. Hirsch says that she cannot follow through spends a great deal of energy—in on such a speciic request because she this video and in others—telling her is a “free spirit.” he juxtaposition audience that she is expressing her between Caroline’s deadpan reading true self, that she really is who she of the explicit letter with her bub- claims to be. his efort is not only bly response to Kevin is at the core that of an artist trying to maintain a of Hirsch’s performance. Hirsch is believable performance, but also an clearly uncomfortable by the way emblem of internet life. Because the that her videos—and her identity— internet allows one to curate one’s have been co-opted by an audience online identity, those identities have of strangers. However, as her own always been subject to suspicion. As identity is distanced by the mechan- a result, people with online person- ics of her online performance, she alities—particularly young women— accepts those messages that make her have been compelled to frequently uncomfortable. Choosing to respond reassert their authenticity, often by to this message in particular, Hirsch posting photos of themselves hold- utilizes her discomfort as a means ing paper with their usernames or of critique; the video makes public other custom messages handwritten the explicit and violating nature of on them, or, as in Caroline’s case, otherwise private comments, refusing posting videos reading comments to leave them unchallenged. and messages. Of course, Caroline’s In the second half of the video does not prove her authentic- four-and-a-half-minute video, Caro- ity. As the internet is a site for play line responds to a message from a and exploration, it is also a site for fourteen-year-old girl who expresses private deception, a condition which her desire to be like Caroline, as enables it to become fertile ground well as to a hate comment, which for the construction of identities, as includes a death threat. Caroline in Hirsch’s case. responds to the hate mail by saying Even if one is not a video that it inspires her, that she feels as performance artist, to be on the if she is “actually creating emotions internet at all is to perform. YouTube and, like, visceral feelings in people” was never the non-hegemonic media Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 17 utopia that Hirsch envisioned, but for young women. Proulx asserts, a platform literally encoded with “Soda ofers up relentless, linked-in algorithmic restrictions. In “Protocol imagery of herself that does not quite and Performativity,” Mikhel Proulx sit right – does not pass for norma- discusses the performance built into tive or conventional.”18 he notion of online systems, particularly in social the performance that “does not quite media. Proulx asserts that “perfor- sit right” appears in Hirsch’s work, mance online is coded” doubly “both particularly in “LETTERS TO AN by ‘oline’ ideological systems as INTERNET WHORE.” well as through ‘online’ technical Hirsch’s adoption of tropes systems.”15 herefore, Hirsch’s perfor young women on the internet, formance as a young woman online with her simultaneous refusal to let was coded before she even began them go unchallenged, serves as a cri- it. Participating in online youth tique of online space. At irst blush, culture, which has a “heightened the virtual arena seems liberating imperative to perform stylized ideals for young women, but it ultimately in identity performance” within “the proves destructive. his critique of relative safety of a personal com- online media is a natural outgrowth puter,” Hirsch found herself free to of video artists’ critique of television explore the stylized identity of young media in the 1960s and 1970s. In womanhood.16 While at irst Hirsch “Video: Shedding the Utopian Mo- saw her performance as an expression ment,” Martha Rosler establishes that of free access to media-creation, she video art of the period “posed a chal- quickly found that online culture lenge to the sites of art production in for young women was seeped in society, to the forms and ‘channels’ what Proulx calls “a shallow rhetoric of delivery, and to the passivity of of empowerment and self-serving reception built into them.”19 In their individualism.”17 In his essay, Proulx utopian critique of hegemonic mass examines the performance and media, early video artists, acting installation work of Molly Soda, a under the legacy of the avant-garde millennial woman artist who, like movement, worked to merge “art Hirsch, explores the aesthetics and with social life,” making “audience mechanisms of online performance and producer interchangeable.”20 To

15 Proulx, “Protocol and Performativity,” 114. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Martha Rosler, “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment,” in Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, ed. Sally Jo Fifer and Doug Hall (New York: Aperture in association with the Bay Area Video Coalition, 1990), 31. 20 Rosler, “Video,” 31. 18 Scandalishious Narcissism some degree, the intimacy established Hirsch, the performer, and Caroline, between Hirsch and her audience in the character, have been irreparably “Scandalishious” does merge art with severed by the webcam, the monitor, social life. However, the dynamic and the YouTube video player. between Hirsch and her audience is Toward the end of 2009, not equalized, and Hirsch’s ability Hirsch was blackmailed by one of to respond to her letters and videos the viewers of “Scandalishious,” illustrates the power struggle at play who demanded she send him a nude between the two parties. video. Out of fear of exposure of her “Scandalishious,” operating private life, Hirsch had her university in an intimate interior, focuses on remove all traces of her from their the private feeling of Caroline talking website, and she stopped posting on to the webcam as if she were talking “Scandalishious.” She backed away to a friend. Rosler asserts that video from the project, retreating this time positions “the individual and the into oline safety. In December of world of the ‘private’ over and against that year, however, she uploaded the ‘public’ space of the mass,” “CAROLINE’S OFFICIAL GOOD- emphasizing “the experience and the BYE VIDEO” in which she told her sensibilities of the individual.”21 Due audience, “I’m done being Scan- to that intimacy, however, viewers dalishious” and oicially closed the of “Scandalishious” felt they knew project (ig. 5).23 Speaking to her au- Caroline personally, a relationship dience in the confessional video style, which enabled their inappropriate, she says, “So, some of you know that overly personal demands. In the I’m, like, an artist, and I was think- end, Hirsch remains in power, as ing, maybe this is my art.” For a few she withholds key information from moments, the bubbly, high voice of her audience: she is not Caroline, Caroline drops down to the authen- and Caroline is not real. he perfor- tic voice of Ann, as she explains what mance, despite its apparent intimacy, she sought to learn about herself can never be authentic through the and the internet on “Scandalishi- lens of narcissistic video. Within ous,” before she raises her voice back Krauss’s framework, it is the medium again, to the high voice of Caroline, itself—the artist always looking backing up to perform one last at her mirror relection—that has dance. She says to the camera before displaced the performer’s subjectivity she goes, “Whatever happens, know into “another, mirror, object.”22 Ann that I’m real, and that I’m here.” he

21 Rosler, “Video,” 32. 22 Krauss, “Video,” 54. 23 Ann Hirsch, “CAROLINE’S OFFICIAL GOODBYE VIDEO,” YouTube video, 7:26, Posted Dec. 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFX7iNgsAPY. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 19 video closes as Caroline dances to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance,” spinning around her apartment. Before turning of the webcam, Hirsch says a inal goodbye, giving acknowledgements to Gor- don Winiemko, her collaborator on the piece. In the end, then, Hirsch reveals “Scandalishious” as an art performance, rather than an intimate view into her own life. Ultimately, Hirsch’s performance of internet narcissism gave her a closed feedback loop, which at once enabled and endangered her, in which she ofered both connection and critique. Hirsch built a room for Caroline online, a room at once constricted and free, private and public, genuine and predetermined. In its contradictions, “Scandalishious” exposes the paradox of online life: one is free to explore the intimacies of identity, but one is forever constricted to the performance of narcissism. 20 Scandalishious Narcissism

Laurie Roark is a student at Yale University, where she will graduate with a degree in American Studies this spring.

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“Ann Hirsch on the art project that invaded her private life.” he Start podcast from he Guardian. Produced by Eva Krysiak. Feb. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2018/feb/08/ann-hirsch- art-online-youtube-scandalishious-the-start-podcast. Benjamin, Walter. “Louis Phillippe, or the Interior.” In he Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, 8-9. Cambridge, MA and London: he Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. Hirsch, Ann. “caroline + bonnie tyler.” YouTube video, 5:49. Posted Feb. 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2wUbfhYlw. ———“CAROLINE’S OFFICIAL GOODBYE VIDEO.” YouTube video, 7:26. Posted Dec. 2009. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QFX7iNgsAPY. ———“LETTERS TO AN INTERNET WHORE.” YouTube video, 4:29. Posted Dec. 2008. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kmlU4qaKl40&t=2s. Krauss, Rosalind. “Video: he Aesthetics of Narcissism.” October 1, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 50-64. Proulx, Mikhel. “Protocol and Performativity.” Performance Research 21, no. 5 (2016): 114-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1224341. Rosler, Martha. “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment.” In Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art. Edited by Sally Jo Fifer and Doug Hall, 31-50. New York: Aperture in association with the Bay Area Video Coalition, 1990. “Scandalishious.” In Net Art Anthology, edited by Rhizome staf. New York: New Museum, 2016-2019. https://anthology.rhizome.org/scandalishious. Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women.” In Interiors, edited by Johanna Burton, Lynne Cooke, and Josiah McElheny, 32-36. Annandale-on- Hudson, NY: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31822038710331. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 21 Cyborg Assemblage Wangechi Mutu and the Politics of Hybridity Zoë Hopkins

Figure 1. Wangechi Mutu, Hide ’n’ Seek, Kill or Speak, 2004. Mixed media collage and paint on mylar. 22 Cyborg Assemblage

Abstract his paper engages Wangechi Mutu’s Hide n’ Seek, Kill or Speak through a lens that combines Black feminism and postcolonial theory. Hide n’ Seek, which depicts an East African mythological creature called an nguva, is demon- strative of Mutu’s slippage between the borders of futurity and folklore, the recognizable and the unintelligible. Drawing from Homi Bhabha’s analysis of postcolonial interstitiality, as well as Hortense Spiller’s scholarship on the hi- eroglyphics of the lesh, I consider how the aesthetic and material dimensions of Mutu’s deiant work unsettle the coloniality of being human. My paper argues that Mutu’s work, and the binary-refusing thinking that undergirds it, advances posthumanist conceptions of being that is guided by a careful critique of race and gender—and the exclusion of those marginalized by those categories from the notion of being itself. Situating Mutu’s work within the theoretical rubric of the racialized assemblage rather than the self-determined subject, I will explore how Mutu seeks to decolonize the human, even moving beyond it completely. My paper determines Mutu’s work within a radical (de) gendered politics guided by a conception of the ways in which gender glitches (or fails) the Black body, and opens up alternative possibilities in so doing.

angechi Mutu’s Hide ‘n’ Seek, painting is an nguva—a water-wom- WKill or Speak is unwaver- an goddess of East African mythol- ingly confrontational. Exemplary of ogy. She ixes us steadily in her gaze, Mutu’s large scale mixed media col- the whites of her eyes held distinct lages on mylar, Hide ‘n’ Seek boldly from the rough material of her skin. embodies a clashing of the seemingly he nguva is deiant not only in her natural with the seemingly techno- gaze, but also in the very fact of her logical, the human with the other- presence, which eludes the politics worldly, and the beautiful with the of recognizability and slips into a eerie—radically disrupting the pos- coded, secret language. Does she rep- sibility of viewing it with any sense resent recollection or futurity —the of comfortability or ease. Mutu’s pre or post colonial? Is she human or collage features a goddess of East Af- alien? Or perhaps she is neither? he rican mythology known as an nguva, nguva resists intelligibility under the a creature thought to be derived conventional rubrics of humanism. from the dugong—one of the most She is situated beyond the lexicon of endangered mammals in East Africa.1 the subject or the normative “female Crouching in the foreground of the igure.” his paper will interpret Hide

1 “Hide 'n' Seek, Kill or Speak.” he Studio Museum in Harlem, November 28, 2018. https://studiomuseum.org/collection-item/hide-n-seek-kill-or-speak. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 23

’n’ Seek through the lens of critical describes this rebellious, unconined theory on postcolonial hybridity and modality of being in his seminal text Black feminist interstitiality, examin- On the Location of Culture. Bhabha ing Mutu’s work as a disruption of writes: “it is the power of hybridity binary colonial and Western thought that enables the colonized to chal- grounded in humanism. I will argue lenge the boundaries of discourse, that in rejecting Western human- and which breaks down the sym- ism, Mutu’s piece instantiates a shift metry and duality of the self/Other, towards a post-human hybridity inside/outside, and which establishes that is articulated in the otherized, another space of power/knowledge.”2 gendered, and raced body, a para-on- Mutu herself has articulated a critical tology that resists binary settlement. understanding of the postcolonial As a point of departure, being as a hybrid one. When in- an explanation of postcolonial hy- terviewed on her artwork, Mutu bridity is fundamental to the argu- expressed that “the idea of clear ment of this paper. Hybridity theory binaries—African/European, archaic/ holds that the postcolonial body, modern and religion/pornography— indelibly marked and molded by I’ve never really believed in that. I’m both precolonial and colonial experi- interested in powerful images that ences and ways of being, emerges as strike chords embedded deep in our 3 hybrid. he postcolonial standpoint, subconsciousness.” Mutu’s quest to formed in the cultural, political, and break down the barriers of binary phenomenological breaks between thought, to situate her artwork with- the colonial gaze and the gaze of in the cultural interstices of postcolo- the colonized self, exists within the nial hybridity, thus becomes a quest unique epistemological and onto- towards a kind of spiritual reckoning, logical position that these interstitial a location of the self through the spaces aford. In so doing, the post- denial of predetermined discourses. colonial subject-but-object radically he mythological, semi- disrupts conigurations of the subject divine being we encounter in Hide that rely on dual or binary systems ’n’ Seek is the most obviously hybrid of categorization—as has been dimension of Mutu’s work: it is the canonized in Western philosophy. irst site of disruption of convention- he theory of postcolonial hybrid- al, unidimensional, universal under- ity is perhaps most closely ailiated standings of the human that Western with scholar Homi K. Bhabha, who humanism and its foundational texts

2 Bhabha, H. (1985). Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817. Critical Inquiry 12 (1), 144-165. 3 Mutu interviewed in Moss, David. “Wangechi Mutu: this you call civilization.” 2010. 24 Cyborg Assemblage take as immutable. he nguva, in her tion of this work? On the one hand, essence as a mythological creature, Mutu’s nguva appears powerfully in naturally transcends the category of control of the picture plane, con- the human and repudiates the tradi- fronting the viewer, daring us to gaze tion of secular humanism, which back at her. She does not concede demands that the free and rational to legibility under the rubrics of the being divest itself from the mythical normative body. She is represented as and the spiritual. But at the same fragmented in her fantastical non- time, the nguva does not settle easily humanness—her lesh assembled in this vein of categorization of being out of a multitude of materials, her super-human, or so totally mythical very physicality signifying a kind of that she immediately registers as not irreconcilable fracturing, an aporia. human. he nguva’s eyes, mouth, and But this registering of the nguva as ears, drawn from magazine clippings, alien, as subversive in her failure to are icons of human physiology that acquiesce to normative physical- beg us to interpret her as sapient. he ity, necessarily calls coloniality into shape of her body also resembles that conversation: it is coloniality that of a human, with limbs resembling constructs the normatively gendered arms and legs, and a human-shaped and raced body. Even if we chose to head. But the materiality of this body view the nguva’s nonhumanness as enacts a radical departure from the superhuman rather than subhuman, human: her skin is made up of an her being is informed and regulated unidentiiable kind of pattern that is by colonial ways of seeing. Her frag- almost scale-like, perhaps an allusion mentated, indeterminate form simul- to the mythological nguva’s existence taneously refuses and calls upon the as a water creature. Her spine is gaze of the colonizer, both taunting decorated with shimmering spots it and calling it into being in the very enhancing our sense that she is cross- act of this taunting. In imbricating ing the boundaries of the human, the otherizing gaze of the colonizer that she is somewhat alien to our with the intractable stare of the colo- understandings of human physicality. nized, Mutu into motion a kind of Observed in concert, these markings double sight. he lesh of the nguva, of the human and the “non” become and more generally, the human/in- co-constitutive facets of the nguva’s humanness represented in materiality bodily assemblage, rendering her a of Mutu’s work in many ways enacts igure in the break between half and this hybrid gaze and situates the aes- full—a human but not quite human. thetic of the piece in realms beyond he paradoxical encounters the binary. Mutu’s igure is inescap- that Mutu stages in her work beg the ably rendered within that complex question of lens: speciically, which psychological position of second- gazes are operative in the forma- sight and double-consciousness Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 25

W.E.B. Du Bois famously describes: trope of phenotypical categoriza- “he Negro is…born with a veil, and tion. She is meant to represent a gifted with a second-sight,” Du Bois igure of East African mythology, writes. “It is a peculiar sensation, this which we are wont to assume sug- double consciousness, this sense of gests Blackness, given that icons of always looking at one’s self through a given culture are often racialized the eyes of others, of measuring one’s as if they were born of that speciic soul by the tape of a world that looks culture. She also wears features that on in amused contempt and pity.” signify Blackness/Africanness—Mutu he conspicuousness of the nguva’s is known to frequently make use eyes, which Mutu frames with Black of pieces from historically Black skin, calls attention to the centrality magazines to build up her igures, of gaze in the psychological madness actively lending them features that of racialization. he tense stare with strike the viewer’s consciousness as which the nguva grips the viewer is Black. he skin around the nguva’s fraught with these traumas. he un- captivating eyes is dark brown in fettered capacity of this double-sight hue, and her lips are full—denoting to rupture, or “tear asunder” the a Black phenotype. It also happens spirit as Du Bois puts it,4 testiies to that these features are some of the the absolute illogic of racialism and most recognizably human parts of racial categories. her physique. At the same time, the he hybrid human/hu- majority of the nguva’s skin does not manoid appearance of the nguva bear resemblance to any sort of hu- also visualizes rebellion against man skin-tone, and of course neither racial categorization, and with it the do the parts of her body formed out foundations of Western humanism. of machinery. So Blackness emerges As Achille Mbembe argues, “racism again as both human and other: is above all a technology aimed at it is Blackness that carries the sole permitting the exercise of biopower, signiiers of human physiology, but ‘that old sovereign right of death.”5 Blackness becomes inseparable from In other words, if the colonial infra- alienness in its attachment to the structure is contingent on deining nguva’s body. Blackness, then, like and maintaining racial binaries, the the igure of the postcolonial hybrid, postcolonial infrastructure is one that instantiates a visual and (meta)physi- disrupts colonial categorizations of cal threat to colonial determinations race. he nguva is racialized as Black, of the human. Simultaneously, in but she also transcends the colonial forming the body out of pieces that

4 Ibid 5 Mbembé, J.-A., and Libby Meintjes. "Necropolitics." Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003), 11-40. muse.jhu.edu/article/39984. 26 Cyborg Assemblage signify Blackness alongside pieces through domination,” is foundation- that signify neither Blackness nor al to the logic of Western human- humanness, Mutu exposes the total ism, which relies on the myth of the constructedness of race, revealing co- universal, unitary subject to make lonial mechanisms of socio-political its claims. he cyborg, on the other control that hinge on categorizations hand, is a repudiation of humanism’s and reject hybridity. demand for the unitary. But even he interrogation of race as the cyborg covertly, perhaps unwit- a construction of biopolitical vio- tingly, partakes in binaries. Take the lence begs a more careful examina- words of Harraway as an example: tion of the discursive space in which Harraway famously declares in the gender is made construct. he nguva inal line of her essay “I would rather does not settle within the conscripts be a cyborg than a goddess.” But can of gender. While it is true that the these things not coexist? he nguva is nguva is conventionally as a “mythi- both cyborg and goddess: her cyborg cal water woman from East African existence does not undo her ties with folklore,” and is historically referred a spiritual and mythological lineage. to with “she/her” pronouns, the While the nguva certainly approaches nguva igured in Mutu’s work renders the idea of the cyborg in the lit- this categorization insuicient in her eral mechanics of her physique, she cyborgian opposition to the gender remains a fugitive of the binaries that binary: the body she inhabits not even Harraway’s language falls into. only eludes the human, but more Looking towards Black speciically, it slips into the techno- feminist theory is useful in clos- logical. Parts of her shoulder, thigh, ing some of the loopholes that and feet are assembled from metal Harraway’s work does not account scraps and tools, redoubling the am- for, speciically in the locus where biguity of her body and articulating gender meets racism and coloniality. a kind of Afrofuturist science iction. he visuality of the nguva’s being calls Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto upon the work of Hortense Spillers, is useful in approaching the question who theorizes Blackness as a state of of gender as it relates to the Mutu’s being non-gendered. In her deini- igure. Haraway famously declares tive essay Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe, “the cyborg is a creature in a post Spillers writes that Blackness is a gender world,” arguing that in its “materialized scene of unprotected non-singularity, the cyborg neces- female lesh—of female lesh ‘ungen- sarily destabilizes the taxonomy of dered’.” For Spillers, this ungender- identity, and thus the idea of gender ing—which follows the brutalities as ixed. Haraway underscores that of enslavement, colonization, and the struggle for identities based in other apparatuses of Necropolitics wholeness, or the struggle for “unity directed at Blackness—occurs at Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 27 the distinction between “the body cupies this terrifying elision between and the lesh.” Spillers remarks that being and non-being that is beyond “before the ‘body’ there is the ‘lesh,’ the discursive space in which gen- that zero degree of social conceptual- der is fashioned. he nguva, in her ization that does not escape conceal- slippage away from the monikers ment under the brush of discourse of normalized discourse, and in her or the relexes of iconography.”6 In slippage in and out of the human, is other words, the body falls under the a perfect instantiation of this theory. discursive and iconographic domain And it is her lesh, her material being of the embodied subject, while the of (dis)assemblage and amalgama- lesh is a mass of non-subject physi- tion, that situates her within these cality, anterior to the body and illeg- liminal realms of nondeterminate ible to the grammars of subjecthood subjectivity. and life. Spiller’s conceptualization of Constructed out of a com- lesh refers speciically to Black non- plex schema of shapes and motifs, bodies for which the discourse of Mutu’s construction of the body being and humanity lack terminol- through collage is hybridization in ogy, apprehended by the indescrib- practice: the body comes into being able violence by which Blackness through a process of assemblage and has been rendered unhuman. While disassemblage that speaks to the for- Harraway’s cyborg seeks to describe mation of postcolonial existence. he a condition of life in a “post gen- process of collage begins with the act der world,” and even a post-human of rupturing: fracturing an environ- world, Spillers argues that gender ment by tearing something of its and humanity were never possible original place of existence. his irst for those subject to the violence of function of collage, its function captivity and colonialism. Building of disassemblage, is in many ways on this idea in another essay titled similar to the colonial disruption of Interstices: A Small Drama of Words, space through fracturing and segrega- Spillers writes that the Black woman tion. Frantz Fanon’s theorization of is “the principal point of passage the construction of colonial space is between the human and the non- useful in illuminating my point. In human world.”7 he Black woman his seminal text he Wretched of the therefore bears no gender because she Earth, Fanon writes “the colonial (or they, or any other pronoun) oc- world is a world cut in two” where

6 Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17(2), 1987. 7 Spillers, Hortense J. “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words.” In Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 152-175. 28 Cyborg Assemblage both zones “follow the principle ing of the various worlds indexed in of reciprocal exclusivity.”8 In other these source materials. In gazing at words, colonialism revolves around a Mutu’s collage, we are reminded of fracturing between the world of the magazine pages and car parts and colonized and the world of the colo- birds, a cacophony (or chorus) of nizer, which Fanon describes as “two that which is unseen but felt in the diferent species” whose experiences signiiers she has assembled. With are irreconcilable. As Bhabha and this web of source material, Mutu’s other postcolonial theorists point work refuses the colonial binaries of out, the postcolonial being is subse- Self/Other, One/Many, destabilizing quently formed through the tortuous the Western proposals of being as oscillation between and within these an isolated thing in itself. he nguva bifurcated, disjunctive spaces— points to ways of being described by which are both physical and psycho- and grounded in mutuality, in the logical—producing an impossible interstices formed by the continuous aporia. hus, postcoloniality comes meeting of diference. into being inside what Bhabha terms In keeping with the work’s a “hird Space of enunciation”9 one ontological proposals of being as an that is beyond—or rather in the cut ensemble, the representation of space between—the spatial bifurcation of and environment in Mutu’s work colonialism that Fanon describes. pivots on sharing and relationality. he process of decolonization, and Strikingly, the nguva is represented thus the formation of a postcolonial as simultaneous with and inseparable humanity, is grounded in a dialec- from her environment. he reeds tic between the fracturing of space that waver in the space behind her under a colonial regime and the body are seemingly meshed with her reclamation of said space through the very being. hey replicate the pat- struggle for decolonization. Mutu’s terns and rhythms of the locks on the process of collage assemblage here nguva’s head and her back, building forms a body that is constituted by a continuity between her physical many things: the nguva is both em- presence and the imagined envi- bodied and disembodied, both a sin- ronment around her. Likewise, the gle and multitudinous being—whole environment itself deies traditional but also very visibly fractured, with boundaries and conceptualizations various material agents becoming of space. Rendered with relatively legible. Mutu’s collage work is not minimal detail, the only signiiers of only an assembling of various materi- any kind of determined ecosystem als and textures, but also a conjur- are the reeds in the backdrop of the

8 Fanon, Frantz. Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1968). 9 Bhabha, Homi K. he Location of Culture (Routledge, 2004). Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 29 painting. While the reeds do con- of the land subverts colonial ideas of note an aqueous environment, Mutu the earth existing as a resource for in- denies us certainty as to whether the inite human expropriation. hough nguva is staring at us from below the painting clearly reckons with the water or from the vantage of colonialism, the environment Mutu some kind of shoreline. he only envisions feels unblemished by the other creature in the frame is a small ravishes of colonial history, staging bird nuzzled between the nguva’s yet another ambiguity. head and shoulder. hus, we are Invoking experiences met with an environment that is an of the precolonial, colonial, and amalgam of land, air, and water, an postcolonial, Mutu’s Hide ‘n’ Seek undeined space of natural continu- oscillates through and rebels against ity. In reading the multiplicity of time—disrupting the binaries which this environment, Homi Bhabha these monikers of temporality lay is again called to mind, speciically claim to. he nguva, which also his theories of postcolonial person- igures prominently in other works hood being formed in the interstitial by Mutu, embodies this simultane- “hird Space” between colonized and ity of past and future through its postcolonial positions. Bhabha de- formation by technological simulacra scribes this hird Space as “[giving] that place us clearly in our time. In rise to something diferent, some- Hide n’ Seek, time is therefore an as- thing new and unrecognizable, a new semblage, a montage-like slippage in area of negotiation of meaning and and out of past, present, and future representation.”10 hough Bhabha’s that renders these categories obsolete. description of hird Space refers to Time is represented as simultane- an ontological hybridity, in Mutu’s ously broken and whole. hough the work, hird Space theory is also piece relies heavily on the aesthetics made material and environmental. of Afro-futurism, these same aesthet- he ambiguity of the landscape and ics are haunted with a colonial past. the nguva’s relationship to it, render Hide ’n’ Seek at once seeks to envision spatial categorizations of the land a new future and reckon with an old obsolete. As Fanon reminds us when one, calling upon an understanding he describes the colonial world as cut of the postcolonial that is necessar- in two, the division of space and land ily informed by a dialectic between is foundational to coloniality. Mutu’s both precolonial existence and (post) undetermined, hybrid landscape is colonial trauma. he use of modern thus a refusal of colonial ixations on world materials to envision this folk- classifying the land, and her repre- loric, mythological igure is a shock- sentation of the nguva as both in and ing representation of reconigured

10 Ibid., 211. 30 Cyborg Assemblage

Wangechi Mutu, Chocolate Nguva, 2015. Painted bronze with marble base. Image credits: h e Studio Museum in Harlem. temporality. In using indexes of the h rough a process of disassemblage contemporary to build a i gure that and assemblage, Mutu has conjured is meant to recall a historical lineage up an image of the postcolonial of folklore and storytelling, Mutu African i gure that is made from both constructs time as circular rather past and future, human and nonhu- than linear: it cycles back and forth, man, body and environment. Mutu’s rendering obsolete the distinctions assemblage work is a radical subver- between past, present, and future. In sion of European painters and collage Hide ’n’ Seek, time constantly refers artists like Picasso and Matisse, who back to itself, much in the same appropriated heavily from African way that the postcolonial i gure is aesthetics, philosophies, and theolo- formed in the space between colonial gies. As Simon Gikandi describes, past and postcolonial present. h e paintings like Picasso’s Demoiselles work thus asks its viewer to imagine D’Avignon were reliant on the colo- and untangle the formation of “the nial view of Africa not as a real place, postcolonial subject” through a visual but as an abstract concept servicing representation of the literal rupturing European fantasies of the primitive, and piecing together of the African the mystic, and the hyper-sexual.11 subject and environment. African masks could be collected and Mutu’s Hide ’n’ Seek, Kill painted onto the faces of European or Speak, represents postcolonial women simply to represent the idea hybridity through the very essence of of sexual promiscuity.12 In Gikani’s its materiality, confronting the viewer words: “when [Picasso] talked about with a visualization of a postcolonial the ‘Negro’, he was talking about i gure that deconstructs the binaries the object not the person.”13 But in imposed on space, time, and being. Mutu’s assemblage, the piecing to-

11 Gikandi, Simon. "Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Dif erence." Modernism/ modernity 10, no. 3 (2003): 455-80. 12 Ibid, 468. 13 Ibid, 456. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 31 gether of diferent worlds repudiates, rather than reproduces the aesthetics of coloniality that have shaped the Western tradition of collage and assemblage. Hide N’ Seek gives rise to a modality of expression that is constantly breaking free from Western conscripts of being and humanism. Mutu’s collage is a ierce commitment to unsettling the colonial foundations of being itself, a manifesto of hybrid possibility that dares to confront the ontologies we take for granted.

Zoë Hopkins is a student at Harvard University, Class of 2023, where she studies History of Art and African American Studies.

Bibliography

Bhabha, Homi K. “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817.” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 144-65. ———he Location of Culture. Routledge Classics. London ; New York: Routledge, 2004. Fanon, Frantz, he Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Gikandi, Simon. "Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Diference." Modern ism/modernity 10, no. 3 (2003): 455-80. “Hide 'n' Seek, Kill or Speak.” he Studio Museum in Harlem, November 28, 2018. https://studiomuseum.org/collection-item/hide-n-seek-kill- or-speak. Mbembé, J.-A., and Libby Meintjes. "Necropolitics." Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11-40. muse.jhu.edu/article/39984. Moos, David., and Art Gallery of Ontario. Wangechi Mutu: his You Call Civilization? Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010. Spillers, Hortense J. “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words.” In Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, 152- 175. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ———“Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17(2), 1987. “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey.” Brooklyn Museum: Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey. Brooklyn Museum, 2014. https://www.brooklyn- museum.org/exhibitions/wangechi_mutu/. 32 Questioning the Useful Corpse Questioning the Useful Corpse Representing AIDS in the Work of David Wojnarowicz Aubrienne Krysiewicz-Bell

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day h is Kid), 1990. Whitney Museum of American Art

Abstract David Wojnarowicz was a young artist who emerged during the time of the AIDS epidemic in America whose work addresses civil rights and queer identity in American popular culture, particularly focusing on the experiences of societal “outsiders.” h e taboo surrounding AIDS in the public eye and government inaction to stop it were highly personal topics for Wojnarowicz, who witnessed i rsthand the deadly and debilitating results of institutional neglect of the epidemic. During this time, a dominant motif of AIDS-related art, seen in both the work of other queer artists as well as in media portrayals of this community, was the diseased-deformed body or corpse of an AIDS- victim. Scholars such as Lauren DeLand have labeled this trope as the “useful Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 33 corpse”: which they argue was necessary, yet perverse. his paper undertakes an examination of the useful corpse aesthetic in an efort to problematize such representations. Rather, artists such as Wojnarowicz distinguish themselves from this prevailing artistic trope by conveying the gravity, injustice, and outrage associated with the AIDS crisis without exploiting the aesthetic of AIDS’ victims' decaying bodies. As I will argue, through a juxtaposition of text and images, Wojnarowicz refuses to engage with the perversity of the “useful corpse” trope. Rather, his work seeks to humanize the victims of the AIDS crisis and shift blame from individuals to institutions.

s America entered the 1980s politicians went further, proposing Aand 1990s, few could have that alicted individuals should be anticipated the profound cultural forcibly tattooed with a marker or change that occurred during these put in concentration camps.3 Not decades. he nation witnessed the only did this incorrectly stigmatize resurgence of conservative politics, the queer community, but it also the inal phase of the Cold War, and severely thwarted eforts to develop the onset of the AIDS crisis. Institu- treatment options, support resources, tional inaction and public homopho- and medical research to ind a cure. bia were rampant during the AIDS Naturally, the queer community re- crisis, primarily because the virus acted with outrage to this reprehen- disproportionately afected commu- sible lack of response. Confronted nities that Reagan’s “Moral Majority” with government silence, public preferred to ignore: queer people, sex inaction, and with no vaccine in workers, and injection drug users. sight, AIDS activists began to form Government, religious, and business groups like the Gay Men’s Health leaders demonized and shunned the Crisis to provide care for patients, as epidemic, which proved devastat- well as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To ing: over 30,000 individuals had Unleash Power) to protest political contracted the disease, and almost injustices.4 However, an extraordi- half of those had died by 1986.1 he nary level of creative energy in the art irst time President Reagan spoke world emerged during this time of about AIDS in 1985 was to propose turmoil and change. restrictions on funding a cure for As artist-activists came to the so-called “gay cancer.”2 Other the forefront of this movement, a

1 Nicolas Lampert, A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, 252. 2 bid, 252. 3 Ibid, 253. 4 Ibid, 256. 34 Questioning the Useful Corpse dominant motif of AIDS-related art, ment. Despite being perverse, it con- seen in both the work of queer artists demned institutional inaction and as well as in media portrayals of this raised awareness about the horriic community, became the diseased-de- realities of the disease. While scholars formed body or corpse of the AIDS- have assimilated much of AIDS- victim. Lauren DeLand, a scholar of activist art under the umbrella of the modern and contemporary art, calls “useful corpse” aesthetic, this is an this trope the “useful corpse,” and incomplete picture of the protest art explains in her article “Live Fast, Die of this time; it not only overshadows Young, and Leave a Useful Corpse” unique tactics employed by other art- how artists employed this strategy ists, but also erases the stories of the to combat injustice. According to subjects themselves and places blame DeLand, the useful corpse has three on the victims. manifestations: the body presented One artist who distin- graphically through various forms of guished himself from this prevailing media; the corpse itself staged by the artistic trope of the “useful corpse” living, and the still-living bodies of was a young, gay man named David those who are about to die gathering Wojnarowicz. His art addresses civil in politically charged spaces.5 rights and queer identity in Ameri- DeLand asserts that such can popular culture, particularly fo- images not only intend to shift blame cusing on the experiences of societal from AIDS victims to the powers “outsiders.” he taboo surrounding responsible for perpetuating the epi- AIDS in the public eye and govern- demic (politicians, church oicials, ment inaction and unwillingness to and pharmaceutical executives), but stop it were highly personal topics they also reveal the disease’s devastat- for Wojnarowicz, who witnessed ing efects in ways living and healthy irsthand the deadly and debilitat- bodies could not.6 She recognizes ing results of institutional neglect that the “useful corpse” was a form of of the epidemic. Not only did he self-abjection of the queer commu- lose countless friends, fellow art- nity, which unfortunately appeared ists, and partners to the disease, but to be the only means of achieving he too ultimately passed away from political change and ensuring its AIDS-related complications. Wojn- survival.7 However, she nonetheless arowicz refuses to employ the “useful argues that the “useful corpse” was corpse,” which exploits the aesthetic necessary for the AIDS activist move- of AIDS victims' decaying bodies

5 Lauren DeLand, “Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Useful Corpse: he Terrible Utility of David Wojnarowicz,” 33. 6 Ibid, 33. 7 Ibid, 34. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 35 and reinforces the prevailing senti- sequences of AIDS’ victims' deviant ment that these individuals were to and immoral lifestyles.9 blame. Rather, he conveys the grav- here is a striking similarity ity, injustice, and outrage associated between the portraits of people with with the AIDS crisis by juxtaposing AIDS using the “useful corpse” strat- text and images to humanize and egy and the “face of AIDS” narrative respectfully pay homage to those circulated by the mainstream media. with the disease, shifting blame from his trope is merely a relection–and these individuals to the institutions even more dangerously, a reinforce- responsible for their sufering. ment–of what the general public has In order to fully understand been told about people with AIDS; why the “useful corpse” was damag- the useful corpse ironically sup- ing and why Wojnarowicz sought ported the damaging propaganda of to distance himself from it, we must Reagan’s moral majority that AIDS turn to the stereotypical, negative victims were to blame for the disease. images of the queer community pro- For example, the Museum of Mod- duced by mainstream media during ern Art hosted an exhibit showcasing the crisis. he most common formu- images from photographer Nicholas la for portraying alicted individuals Nixon’s project “People with AIDS,” was to present shocking before and which featured photos of individuals after photos, demonstrating the de- taken over the course of their inal generating efects that the disease had days as the disease ravaged their bod- on the once healthy bodies of those it ies.10 Another photographer, Philip- infected. he press cruelly exploited Lorca Di Corcia, took pictures of his the contrast between the before and friend, another gay artist, as he laid after physical appearances of famous almost unrecognizable on his death- personalities diagnosed with AIDS, bed in a hospital.11 Activists also em- including Rock Hudson and Fred- ployed this tactic in protest strategies, die Mercury, who both ultimately such as the infamous ‘die-ins’ staged succumbed to complications from by ACT UP. In such demonstrations, the illness.8 In this presentation, thousands of members would lie these individuals become anonymous down at the epicenters of religious, slaves to their symptoms, and their political, and economic power, such bodies become mere canvases for the as Wall Street, the White House, the media to broadcast the apparent con- FDA headquarters, and St Patrick’s

8 Ivana Markova and Robert Farr. Representations of Health Illness and Handicap, 2. 9 Ibid, 2. 10 Lampert, A People’s Art, 259. 11 DeLand, “Live Fast,” 36. 36 Questioning the Useful Corpse

Cathedral, transforming these sites much activist artwork complicit in into symbolic mass graves.12 the delay and prevention of crucial Wojnarowicz’s marriage of AIDS-related legislation, research art and activism difered from that funding, and education.14 of his contemporaries by shunning Wojnarowicz distinguishes the useful corpse in favor of text or himself from this artistic scene, of- other media elements that directly fering a more subtle, implied, and condemned institutional inaction. humanistic approach to representing Artists who engaged with this trope, AIDS victims that preserves, rather like Nicholas Nixon, claimed that than erases, their individuality and their representations were an unsen- autonomy. He disarmed or com- timental and honest portrayal of the pletely omitted the “useful corpse” illness’s devastating efects. Many from his artwork, thus challenging thought that their photographs the destructive narrative that homog- captured an unparalleled degree of enized all people with AIDS to a de- intimacy between the subject, artist, bilitated, helpless archetype reaping and ultimately the viewer.13 However, the punishments of moral deviance. this perspective is inherently incom- Not only did this humanize people plete and lawed; onlookers instead with AIDS to the general American bear witness to the increasing alien- public, shifting blame from alicted ation and self-abandonment of AIDS individuals to the institutions that victims. he useful corpse is a harsh failed them, but it speaks to the visual tactic, bordering on being a fe- queer community directly. As Wojn- tishistic promotion of AIDS victims’ arowicz watched his peers die and degenerate bodies. Wojnarowicz took learned of his own diagnosis, his art objection to the frightening paral- served not only as an outlet for his lels between images circulated by indignation, but also as a mirror to anti-gay organizations and the work relect the pain and grief he experi- of AIDS activists themselves: both, enced as he grappled with this disease regardless of intent, portrayed people on the most personal level. Wojn- with AIDS as ravaged and debilitated arowicz’s work provides a reassuring by the disease, not to mention iso- message to the entire gay community lated, desperate, and helpless in the that AIDS-related deaths were not face of their cruel fate. he implica- in vain, that the victims are more tions of other artists ironically suc- than a disease, and that there is hope cumbing to, instead of ighting, the for political and social change if the inaccurate AIDS narrative rendered responsible powers are condemned.

12 Ibid, 36. 13 Markova and Farr Representations of Health, 1 14 Ibid, 2. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 37

culture. By appealing to a sense of Wojnarowicz’ 1990 multi- shared human compassion within media painting, Untitled (One Day his oppressors, rather than using the his Kid) (ig. 1), ofers an alternative already alienated and demonized im- to the bleak proposition of the “use- age of an AIDS victim, Wojnarowicz ful corpse,” which was a destructive challenges the necessity of the “useful necessity for the success of the AIDS corpse” as a tool for political action. activist movement. his piece is an his is not to say that Wojn- example of an intersection between arowicz did not include images of Wojnarowicz’ visual art and his writ- the deceased in his work; however, he ing: it juxtaposes a nostalgia-evoking did so in a way that refused to engage school photo of his childhood self the stereotypical implications of the with text in the third person future “useful corpse” as a political tool. In tense delineating all the challenges Untitled (Hujar Dead) (ig. 2), Wojn- and punishments he will face as a gay arowicz took images of his mentor, man in America. hese include, but partner, and fellow artist Peter Hujar are not limited to, being subjected on his deathbed, and overlaid these to institutional oppression, having photos with screen printed text. His suicidal thoughts, facing violent at- enraged words are excerpts from a tacks, and hearing that his sexuality controversial essay he wrote for a is a mental disease. Wojnarowicz’s 1989 Artists Space exhibition titled blunt description of the harsh reality “Post Cards from America: X-Rays of queer life in the time of the AIDS from Hell,” in which he speciically epidemic acts as a scathing condem- condemns conservative politicians nation of American society, which for supporting legislation that would has enabled these phenomena. In perpetuate the AIDS epidemic by order to make his work resonate with discouraging safe sex education. viewers, he selects an image of him- What separates this work from other self as a child, rather than a “useful “death portrait” pieces is the fact that corpse” as the image to accompany the photos themselves are relegated this powerful activist text. By depict- to the status of an obscure backdrop ing himself, a future AIDS victim, for the true subject of the work: the as a child, Wojnarowicz implicitly indignation, desire for retaliation, equates such victims with innocence, and anger that Wojnarowicz and purity, and optimism, therefore shift- the entire queer community feel ing blame onto the external forces towards their oppressors. he work that cause him sufering. He reminds derives its power not from exploit- viewers that AIDS victims were once ing a “useful corpse” as a tool for exactly like the “normal” American activism, but rather from the other kids that the straight world sought collaged elements surrounding it. to protect from corruption by queer Behind the superimposed text, these 38 Questioning the Useful Corpse

David Wojnarowicz Untitled (Hujar Dead), 1988-1989. Whitney Museum of American Art. images are barely recognizable as a images in these two works, rather dead body until close examination. than the useful corpse, becomes h e collaged border, that outlines the aesthetic tactic that makes the poster further distracts from the them so potent and dif erentiates photos themselves, includes sperm- Wojnarowicz’ style from that of shaped maps swimming across $20 his contemporaries. Wojnarowicz bills showing the White House–a removes the cruelty and despair from rebuke of political and economic the photographs of AIDS victims, corruption within the nation. Sym- instead transferring the violence and bolically drawing viewers’ attention suf ering to which their bodies are away from the AIDS victim’s body subjected into enraged language. to the sins of American institutions By taking the disease and misery is Wojnarowicz’s implicit cue for the away from the physical images of public to shift blame from the queer AIDS victims, he is severing the link community to their oppressors for that the useful corpse trope rein- the epidemic–a feat which blatant forced between the degenerate body representations of “the useful corpse” and supposed degenerate activity. could not alone achieve. h e superi cial reporting of AIDS h e juxtaposition of text and victims’ physical decay made the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 39

“useful corpse” tactic documentary, Wojnarowicz’ work is that it commu- blurring the line between art and nicates the same degree of outrage at journalism. Instead, Wojnarowicz the unjust response to the AIDS cri- saw his canvases as spaces for artistic sis without demeaning the bodies of imagination through which he could queer victims to convey his messages. amplify his voice in order to con- Instead, he humanizes the subjects in demn the prevailing messages during his art and illustrated the extent to the era’s political climate. Not to be which American society and institu- overlooked is the deeply personal tions had failed and oppressed them. connection he had with the disease Wojnarowicz himself passed away in that precipitated the unique passion, 1992 from AIDS-related complica- empathy, and understanding that tions, and his ashes were scattered motivated his artistic language. on the lawn in front of the White hrough these techniques, House.15 his act, which becomes a Wojnarowicz solidiied his place as work of performance art itself, acts as a unique artistic voice in the AIDS a inal reiteration of the same juxta- activist movement in the 1980s and position between rage and empathy 1990s. Although his art did not and the same political indignation exploit the prevalent “useful corpse” that characterized Wojnarowicz’ aesthetic, it was still just as powerful work. as other political art that did engage with this motif. he real triumph of

15 “Untitled (Hujar Dead).” Whitney.org, https://whitney.org/collection/ works/48140

Aubrienne Krysiewicz-Bell is a student at Harvard Univer- sity, class of 2023, where she studies neuroscience and art history. Bibliography DeLand, Lauren. “Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Useful Corpse: he Terrible Utility of David Wojnarowicz.” Performance Research: On Abjection, vol. 19, no. 1, 2014, pp. 33–40. Markova, Ivana, and Robert Farr. Representations of Health, Illness and Handicap. 1995 Lampert, Nicolas. A People?s Art History of the United States : 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, he New Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral- proquest-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/lib/harvard-trial/detail. action?docID=1321275. 40 Of ‘Yellow’ Of ‘Yellow’ Performing Orientalisms and Cultural Hybridity in Lee Wen’s Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 (1992) Ashleigh Chow

Figures 1 (left) and 2 (right). Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, Lon- don, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Abstract In 1992, the Singaporean performance artist Lee Wen (1957-2019) made his debut as the Yellow Man in Journey of a Yellow Man #1 (1992), where he presented himself as almost naked and painted from head to toe in a jaundiced shade of yellow. I aim to explore Lee’s performance as a paradoxical cultural model – one that overtly refers to stereotypical tropes, yet attempts to subvert any notion of singularity through his mediated interpretations of bodily activism. However, I note: if Lee uses an over-exaggerated, hyper-racialised version of himself as an ironic visual metaphor to confound perceptions within the Orientalist or postcolonial gaze, does he not risk the reframing of himself into the very category that he rejects? In this paper I investigate the underly- ing ambiguity in his subversive mode of presentation and critique its inter- Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 41 pretive risks, such as essentialising a monolithic ‘yellowness’ or synonymising ‘Asianness.’ From there, I also consider Lee’s enactment of self-exploitation from Singapore’s context of multiculturalism and Homi Bhabha’s concept of a ‘third space.’ hus, I unpack Lee’s framework of hyper-colourisation and reconsider it within its wider postcolonial context, revealing a multitude of nuanced anxieties in his attempt to reconigure designations of identity.

eralded as one of Singapore’s bondage (igs. 1-2). Within seconds Hmost “internationally rec- of doing so, he entangled himself ognised performance artists,” Lee in the chains again (ig. 3). Wearing Wen (1957-2019) is perhaps most only briefs painted in the same dis- well-known for his alter ego Yel- tinctive mustard, Lee Wen used this low Man. his jaundiced persona striking yellow body paint to present irst appeared in Lee’s performance himself as an object of scrutiny. With Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 (1992) the red juxtaposed against his yellow during his time as a student at the skin, Lee Wen’s rhythmic bodily City Polytechnic in London. Mark- motions with the chains repeatedly ing a cultural marriage between the mimicked the poles of restraint and two poles of London and Singapore, release (igs. 4-5), after which Lee the archetypal character investigated lined the chains parallel to each Lee’s experience of yellow peril as a other on the loor (ig. 6). He then member of the postcolonial Asian arranged pieces of solid fuel into a diaspora living at the centre of the circle of ire after lighting them up British Empire.1 (igs. 7-8).3 He ended the perfor- Prior to the fourteen-minute mance by lying in the circle of ire long improvised performance, Lee and spinning laterally while still on Wen painted himself from head to his back, as if presenting himself as a toe in a sickly sheen of mustard yel- sacriicial ofering (ig. 9). low (igs. 1-8).2 hen, to begin, he Lee’s Singaporean back- picked up a set of red chains, draped ground is essential to understand- them around his neck, and then ing his performance as a mediation wound them around his arms before between his British viewers and attempting to break free from this the Yellow Man archetype. Born in

1 Lee Wen, Artist’s statement, Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1, City of London Polytechnic (London, 1992). 2 Lee Wen, Journey of a Yellow Man, City of London Polytechnic, London, April 1992. Full performance documentations can be accessed at aaa.org.hk/en/collection/ lee-wen-archive 3 Wen, Artist’s statement, Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1. 42 Of ‘Yellow’

British-colonial Singapore to Singa- ally “severe, conceited and stingy.”5 porean-Chinese parents, Lee Wen he work also aimed to disrupt the lived through Singapore’s turbulent dominance of Chinese ink and wa- process of nation-building from a tercolour painting in Singaporean art British colony to a constituency of of the late twentieth-century, deliver- Malaysia (1963-1965). During this ing performance from its status as time, fraught race relations between “a marginalised form of mainstream Malays and Chinese culminated contemporary art practice.”6 in the 1964 race riots.4 Cohesion his essay explores Lee Wen’s between racial relations became a acid-yellow body beyond conven- priority to the newly-formed repub- tional readings of its hyper-racialisa- lic in 1965 and throughout its rapid tion, instead deining his framework modernisation since. of identity politics as hybrid and As a student in London, indeterminate, resisting synthesis Lee Wen was often mistaken as a to one model of understanding. I ‘mainland Chinese’ who did not will argue that Lee’s outward exag- understand English, despite it being geration of ‘yellowness’ dissolves his native language. Journey of a Yel- any understanding of a monolithic low Man No. 1 was an overt attempt ‘Singaporeanness’ or ‘Chineseness,’ to tackle this homogenising gaze of using the body as a hyperbole to all ‘Asian’ people as one united race/ invert notions of cultural and ethnic nation of the ‘Chinese.’ hus, it rup- homogeneity, especially racial ste- tured the post-Enlightenment, Ori- reotypes. Conversely, it is precisely entalist gaze stemming from Linnae- this hyperbolised performance of us’ homogenising empiricist theory ‘yellowness’ that—while attempting of the Homo Asiaticus species, which to reconigure ethnocentric designa- categorised all Asians as physically tions of identity—could easily be “yellowish…endowed with black hair perceived as self-Orientalising. his and brown eyes” and as emotion- tension needs to be negotiated within

4 Malaysia was inaugurated in 1963 with the merging of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore. his country was not welcomed by the Philippines and Indonesia, who had disputed over the sovereignty of Sabah. A series of Indonesia-led violent attacks took place around Malaysia, including Singapore. his, and a series of other events, led to racial aggression particularly amongst the Chinese majority and the Malay minority, who were originally from Malaya. 5 Elizabeth Brown and George Barganier, Race and Crime: Geographies of Injustice (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018), 74-76. 6 Lee Wen, “Performance Art in Context: A Singaporean Perspective” (Masters, Singapore, La Salle College of Arts, 2006), 10-11, https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/ search/archive/lee-wen-archive-theses/object/performance-art-in-context-a-singaporean-perspective-185585. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 43 the framework of Singapore’s cultural Man through dramatized movements policies, placing the Yellow Man in and costume—Lee blurs the categor- a broader space of critical discussion ical distinctions between human and at the intersection of discourses on alien, subject and stereotype, reality Orientalism, postcolonialism, and and iction. his portrayal of race as multiculturalism. performance subverts any simplistic reading of racial subjectivity: while The Paradox: Self-Orientalism or Lee Wen sets up a chromatic frame- Postcolonial Hybridity? work for reading his performance, In negotiating the vis- this same framework problematizes ibility of the racially marked body a colour-based/race-based under- as a form of cultural criticism, art standing of one’s identity, efectively historian Alice Jim argued that Lee disrupting the monolith of a yellow Wen propounded an “explicit body ‘Asianness.’ performance,” which relied on the However, the decision to ex- explosive literality of his hyper- aggerate the image of an Asian man racialisation to “[explicate] bod- preconceived as ‘Oriental’ through ies in social relations.”7 While the a body already racially marked is “explosiveness” of the Yellow Man as complex, and may nonetheless give a thematic approach at its base level rise to interpretations of the artist as guarantees the legibility of a form the ‘forever foreigner’ or the ‘dirty of race-based cultural criticism, the yellow fellow.’9 Indeed, in posing as ‘explicit’ body is necessarily linked an essentialist trope with the inten- with the complex politics of visibil- tion of subverting it, Lee Wen risks ity. While Jim’s argument focuses on re-framing himself into the very Ori- the hyperbolic racialisation of Lee’s entalised category that he attempts body and its readings, I interpret to dissolve, exacerbating the relative how this performed racialisation lack of visibility of “yellow” artists in communicates a fraught, hybrid the West. identity politics.8 By attempting to In the Location of Culture, literally perform what it means to be postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhab- yellow—scrutinising the humanness ha argued that to promote a new of struggle through his own tortured discursive ambivalence, cultures (and physical presence, yet emphasising thus identities) must be understood the indelible alienness of the Yellow as a product of “hybrid” interactions,

7 Alice Ming Wai Jim, “Lee Wen: Performing Yellow,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 46 (September 2018): 11-16, https://doi.org/10.1086/700243. 8 Ruth Amossy and herese Heidingsfeld, “Stereotypes and Representation in Fic- tion,” Poetics Today 5, no. 4 (1984): 689–695, https://doi.org/10.2307/1772256. 9 Jim, “Lee Wen: Performing Yellow,” 11-46. 44 Of ‘Yellow’ undoing pre-given homogenous tion of the series—the term ‘journey’ ethnic/cultural traits. In doing so, referred more to the contemporary Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity” migratory low of Asian diasporas.13 evades essentialist notions of race, Lee Wen’s objective of unsettling proposing to dissolve epistemological ethno-nationalist assumptions about binaries of identity by promoting an diasporic identities therefore aligns “emergence of interstices” between with Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, ixed identiications, ofering an al- as Lee luctuates between identifying ternative to any singular understand- as a Singaporean, a Chinese person, ing of identity.10 Additionally, by es- and a postcolonial subject of the chewing such distinctions of identity, British Empire. it places the coloniser (in this case, Lee Wen’s Yellow Man the British) and the colonised (the exposes two ideological narratives: Singaporean) in a new non-binary that of the postcolonial subject, relationship, disrupting postcolonial and that of the character of generic hierarchical structures of power and ‘Chineseness’ in twentieth-century visibility.11 popular culture. In he Satanic Verses, While essentialism is based Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie on the “belief in invariable and writes about the identity conundrum ixed properties which deine the of the postcolonial, cross-cultural ‘whatness’ of a given identity,” the subject, describing “ropes around my notion of hybridity is one that is neck. I have them to this day, pull- categorically ambivalent, proposing me this way, and that, East and ing a new “transcultural” form from West, the nooses tightening, com- the processes of displacement and manding, choose, choose… I refuse disjuncture imbricated in colonial- to choose.”14 Lee Wen similarly ism and migration.12 Although re-enacts the postcolonial individual’s recent scholarship interprets the term rumination of struggle, replacing ‘journey’ in Journey of a Yellow Man Rushdie’s ropes with garish chains. to signify the repository of narratives hrough his cyclical embracement that Yellow Man has come to adopt, and rejection of the chains, Lee Wen Lee explained that in Journey of a enacts the visual imagery of subjuga- Yellow Man No. 1—the irst rendition to portray himself as weak in the

10 Homi K. Bhabha, he Location of Culture, Routledge Classics (London: Rout- ledge, 2004), 70. 11 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 1-8. 12 Sayegh, Pascal-Yan, “Cultural Hybridity and Modern Binaries: Overcoming the Opposition Between Identity and Otherness?” (“Cultures in Transit” conference, Liverpool, 2008), https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00610753. 13 Alice Ming Wai Jim, “Lee Wen: Performing Yellow,” 12. 14 Salman Rushdie, he Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988), 211. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 45 midst of a perpetual losing struggle. sheen of yellow and jaundiced ex- With an emphasis on the body’s pression, the short and hunched Lee physical turmoil, Lee Wen under- Wen embodies the general feebleness scores the conspicuous, repetitive and emasculation associated with nature of his bodily relationship with the Sick Chinese Man trope, further the chains. Its constant grappling exaggerating existing stereotypes. and moving recreated the artist’s he prevalence of this strug- struggles in “social bondage”, denot- gling Chinese male stereotype during ing his own questionable “freedom this period can be seen through of individuality, movement, thought, the popularity of the Hong Kong actions, growth and behaviour” – cultural icon of Bruce Lee. In the and subjecting it all to the scrutiny 1972 ilm Fist of Fury (also known of his audience.15 as he Chinese Connection), Bruce his narrative of turmoil Lee politicised the stereotype of resonates with what the political the Chinese man as weak and sick, scientist M.T. Kato calls “decolonisa- demanding, “I’ll only say this once. tion struggles”.16 Kato argued that We [he Chinese] are not sick men.” a symptom of the “struggles” was By encoding historical and cultural the subjection of colonised men as struggles in his character portrayal, socially vulnerable, and subordi- Bruce Lee successfully politicised nated – aligning with the Orientalist ethnic consciousness and its ste- emasculated stereotype.17 he feeble, reotypes, proposing a new ‘type’ of yet masculine characterisation of the Chinese as martial arts masters. Lee Yellow Man seems to draw on the Wen, unlike Bruce Lee, chooses to speciic gendering of the Chinese Sick complicate rather than supplant ‘Man’ trope. Historians have noted these narratives of the Yellow Man to that the Chinese term his Western audience. 東亞病夫 (dongya bingfu), derived from the Using his coloured body as a European epithet for ‘Sick Man of general marker of ethnicity, Lee per- East Asia’, adopts a speciic masculin- formed and emphasised normative ity when translated into Chinese18— assumptions of ‘Eastern’ racial prac- the Chinese term ‘fu’ is gender- tices. Using the ire, fuel, and chains, (夫) speciic, and refers to the gendered he reconigured the previously empty masculine ‘man’ rather than ‘man’ as space to recreate what appears similar humanity. hus, by adopting a sickly to an altar, mimicking the ritualistic

15 Wen, Artist’s statement, Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1. 16 M. T. Kato, “Burning Asia: Bruce Lee’s Kinetic Narrative of Decolonization,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17, no. 1 (2005): 62–99. 17 Ibid. 18 吳政緯, “評楊瑞松，《病夫、黃禍與睡獅－「西方」視野中的中國形 25, no. 1 (2014): 205–15. 象與近代中國國族論述想像》,” 新史學 46 Of ‘Yellow’ practices of the Asiatic religions of cialised body efectively embodies the Taoism, Buddhism, and even Hindu- fundamental enigma of the diasporic ism. Yet the lack of a central altar- postcolonial identity, it poses a risk piece diferentiates the arrangement of self-Orientalism in interpretation. from actual altars, retaining a sense Lee Wen acknowledged this ambigu- of ambiguity. Lee’s own mediating ity by stating his own “postcolonial, body may signify the altarpiece, or displaced history” as based on “local it may serve to mourn the emptiness contexts of an individual’s struggle of the space. hrough the ambiguity within the cultural location of of this altar-like coniguration, Lee Singapore but with view to universal invokes a generalized ‘Eastern’ Asiatic socio-political themes.”21 hus, the religion, referencing not according caveats posed by ‘mediated’ interpre- a precise cultural phenomenon but tations of bodily activism have to be rather a perceived ritual ‘Asianness’ understood through Lee Wen’s role as based on pre-conceived notions of a performer of socio-political critique racial or ethnic practice. By performing this generalised phenomenon of Spaces of Visibility and the ritual, Lee Wen subverts the Orien- Western Spectator talising gaze and instead invokes the Lee Wen materialises and speciic cultural dimensions of his in- visualises his identity in the form dividual bodily existence, emphasis- of nakedness to invoke the disori- ing his body’s beingness and resisting entation and disconnect that he cultural essentialisation.19 Inverting felt when he moved to London his own hyperbolic projection of the from Singapore.22 In Edward Said’s Yellow Man, the artist thus inhab- seminal work Orientalism, he argued its a new ‘liminal’ space beyond that Orientalism is not only a liter- the cultural limits of a Chinese or ary genre, but also an ideological a Singaporean – confounding any discourse inextricably tied to the demarcated perceptions of a singular perpetuation of Western power.23 ‘Asianness’ or ‘Chineseness’.20 Lee’s emphasis on the Yellow Man’s While this ‘liminal,’ ra- distinctively ‘Oriental’ traits essen-

19 C. J. W.-L. Wee, “Body and Communication: he ‘Ordinary’ Art of Tang Da Wu,” heatre Research International 42, no. 3 (October 2017): 286–306, https://doi. org/10.1017/S0307883317000591. 20 Pnina Werbner, “Essentialising Essentialism,” in Debating Cultural Hybrid- ity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, ed. Tariq Modood, Homi K. Bhabha, and Pnina Werbner, Critique, Inluence, Change (London: Zed Books, 2015), 228. 21 Lee Wen, “Performance Art in Context: A Singaporean Perspective.” 22 Ibid. 23 Said, Orientalism. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 47 tialises and caricatures himself under dilemma paired with the hierarchical the gaze of the Western spectators of viewing of the coloniser-colonised the City Polytechnic. In his conspic- relationship poignantly conjures Lee uous yellow body paint, Lee activates Wen’s ambivalence toward his own his space through constant moving, postcolonial identity. jumping, and swinging, emphasising To investigate this perform- his own physical diference from the er-spectator relationship, I will draw spectators. In presenting himself as on Hannah Arendt’s belief that true vulnerable, he creates an immutable political deeds are not ideological hierarchical space of spectatorship, products, but acts of making that placing himself under direct scru- awaken the viewer to their own tiny. I would argue that this space of histories or the potentialities of their viewing re-enacts the similar power future.24 In his performance, Lee structures of hegemonic dominance Wen constructed what Arendt would and suppression that Said had cri- call a ‘space of appearance’ through tiqued in the irst place. By purposely the transformation of a non-space misrepresenting the ‘Other,’ Lee Wen to one that was highly politicised in constructs an unequal relationship its socio-cultural critiques, impos- between himself and the spectator. ing a strong sense of possibility onto hroughout the performance, the his spectators.25 his reconiguration scrutiny imbued in spectatorship of space—the art studio—into a exposes Lee Wen as defenseless and space of struggle and a religious altar vulnerable, with his body as a real- deployed familiar spaces. However, time subject. In this sense, Lee Wen by instituting an environmental shift empowers the viewer, allowing them from its alluded context of a temple, to exert dominance over the strug- it transgressed assumptions of where gling protagonist. A wide range of the Yellow Man belonged.26 Just as emotions are released as the Yellow ethnic-based correlations between Man catapults himself to the centre- race and belonging are subverted, stage, and he is shown in a contemp- this subversion of normative space tuous relationship with his chains, exposes the spectators as political repeatedly breaking free but then em- actors. Sitting between the polarities bracing them. he repetition of his of the past and the potentials of the

24 Laikwan Pang, “Arendt in Hong Kong,” Cultural Politics 12, no. 2 (July 1, 2016): 155-157, https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3592064. 25 Hannah Arendt, he Human Condition, 2nd ed (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1998), 7-8. 26 Paula Seraini, “Subversion through Performance: Performance Activism in London,” in he Political Aesthetics of Global Protest he Arab Spring and Beyond, ed. Pnina Werbner, Martin Webb, and Kathryn Spellman-Poots (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 325-33, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b683.19. 48 Of ‘Yellow’ future, the spectators are prompted on his spectators’ interpretation and to rethink the privileged gazes understanding of his performance granted to them by Lee Wen and to within the context of a wider art his- envision an alternate future without tory for himself to ‘speak’ and thus such ethno-nationalist epistemolo- be ‘heard.’ Additionally, as Spivak gies.27 In this space of appearance, had argued, the Asian artist histori- the visibility of Lee Wen’s own body cally did not hold political autonomy as a medium conjures the discursive but relied on the Western viewer to politics of identity, demanding the generate artistic meaning. If Spivak spectators’ political stance through was correct, then her argument sug- spatial ambiguity. gests that the spectators held an even As Lee Wen treads care- greater power than Lee Wen.30 One fully between subverting Orientalist may question: can the Yellow Man gazes and self-Orientalising himself, ever be fully assimilated into artistic contentious debates on the ‘Other’ ‘centres’ without the perception/self- lurk behind his utopic motive. Ac- perception of peripherality? cording to Spivak’s Can the Subaltern While political, the perfor- Speak?, postcolonial subjects come to mance should also not be assessed ac- be identiied as ‘Other’ in art history cording to any deterministic readings through the usage of the stereotype, of political meaning or by its capac- which is deined through a gaze of ity to catalyse social change. Lee Wen homogenisation. Rather than being discussed his practice as maintaining an autonomous subject of art history, a lexible tolerance for uncertainty the stereotyped body remains an due to its status as a ““process” based object of study deined by Western art,” instrumentalizing “test and academic thought.28 As a result, the inquiry involving a time-sensitive Western perspective (in this case, Lee open-ended operation.”31 Lee’s Wen’s spectators) remains crucially practice, as a ‘thinking’ procedure to superior to that of the ‘Other’ (the produce self-knowledge, establishes stereotyped people of the “yellow an incomplete framework for under- race”).29 In this vein, Lee Wen relies standing Singaporean performance

27 Pang, “Arendt in Hong Kong,” 160-65. 28 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Revised Edition, from the ‘History’ Chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason,” in Can the Subal- tern Speak? Relections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 21-78. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Lee Wen, “Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(V)Apid Changes,” in Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art, ed. Jefrey Say and Seng Yu Jin (Singapore: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, 2016), 82–85. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 49 art, which in its openness of generat- recognised Singaporean artists within ing knowledge, required improvisa- artistic ‘centres.’ However, these poli- tion and spontaneous responses. he cies avoided addressing fundamental artist’s role in this case, if successful, issues with Singapore’s hierarchical was thus to mediate a ‘space of ap- racial categorisations remnant from pearance’ to expose cultural para- colonialism. doxes, introducing a self-awareness Although in laying out his of postcoloniality and diaspora—and theory of hybridity Bhabha claimed providing a wider view that enabled to be a vehement critic of ‘multicul- both the artist and the spectator turalism,’ Singapore’s multicultural to see themselves aesthetically and policies are based on a vision of politically. Perhaps the longevity of coexisting identities that are already the Yellow Man archetype reveals the ‘interstitial’ because of their migra- success of Lee’s endeavor, generating tory histories, aiming to provide new discussions and a new body of a safe space for “a kaleidoscope of knowledge within Singapore’s still- cultures” by embracing diversity.33 incomplete framework of art histori- However, with all of its current ography. population descended from migrants (if not migrants themselves), every Singapore, ‘Multiculturalism’ and Singaporean citizen must also iden- the Geopolitical Imagination tify with an ethnic identity, boxed he politics of Journey of a into the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Yellow Man No. 1 gain new mean- Others (CMIO) categories.34 hese ing within the context of Singapore’s forms of race-based classiications are unique cultural milieu. Between the inextricably tied to the social fabric, 1990s and 2000s, Singapore saw and like the vision of a “Renaissance itself as a new “Renaissance city” city,” unfortunately have not re- and sought to align itself with the centred the epidermal nature of the artistic innovations of Euramerica.32 colonial gaze. Aiming for synchronicity with the While Bhabha notes the ‘mainstream’ art world, Singapore’s problems posed by ‘multicultural- cultural policies attempted to re- ism,’ a model which is evidently cuperate the lack of internationally embraced by Singaporean cultural

32 C.J.W.-L. Wee, “he Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore,” in Charting houghts, ed. Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores, Essays on Art in Southeast Asia (National Gallery Singapore, 2017), 248-249, https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv13xpr6k.22. 33 Singapore Tourism Board, ‘Singapore: Where cultures, religions and passions meet’, SG: Passion Made Possible. https://www.visitsingapore.com/editorials/a-kaleidoscope-of-cultures/ 34 Ibid. 50 Of ‘Yellow’ policies, this critique is not the em- exacerbate conlicts or racial dis- phasis of my study. My purpose is harmonies. On the other hand, the rather to reconsider Lee Wen’s work Singaporean-Indian art historian within Singapore’s CMIO racial Venka Purushothaman critiques the framework, where ethnic markers are lack of a unifying identity in Singa- utilised freely and every Singaporean porean contemporary art, condemn- is automatically boxed into an ethnic ing Singapore’s tendency to “his- category in all formal documents. toricise from without” and calling As seen in the Singapore National for the crystallisation of a “national Pledge: identity” in Singapore’s “globally connected yet locally distanced” “We, the citizens of Singapore, society.36 In this manner, the Sin- pledge ourselves as one united gaporean art historian’s perspective people, regardless of race, lan- directly countervails Bhabha, who guage or religion…”35 argued that such ideas of unity are hegemonic and retain the vestiges of his declamation of “one asymmetrical power structures and united people” may be problematic racial supremacy embedded in the in the lens of Bhabha. In critiquing postcolonial condition. multiculturalism, Bhabha argued Even as Bhabha criticises that to achieve a cohesion of diferent cultural diference as ethnocen- identities in the modern state, the tric and consequentially produc- notion of a unitary identity must be ing other subaltern signiications, dismantled. hus, in Bhabha’s view, he ultimately calls for a resistance culturally pluralistic societies do against the conlation of notions of not provide a platform for dialogue “community” with “homogenisa- between those of diferent cultural tion” or “polarities.”37 It is diicult backgrounds and may potentially to transpose these criticisms into the

35 Written by the cabinet minister S. Rajaratnam in 1988, every morning the full national pledge has been compulsorily recited with the right ist clenched at the heart in government and aided school assemblies in Singapore, serving as a daily reminder of Singapore’s challenge and goal of overcoming the divisions caused by diferences of race, language and religion. he pledge can be accessed at: https://www.nhb.gov. sg/what-we-do/our-work/community-engagement/education/resources/national- symbols/national-pledge 36 Venka Purushothaman, “Drafting History: Meditation on Location, Institu- tions and Myth-Making in Visual Arts in Postcolonial,” in Charting houghts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, ed. Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores, Essays on Art in Southeast Asia (National Gallery Singapore, 2017), 331, https://doi.org/10.2307/j. ctv13xpr6k.28. 37 Benita Parry, “Signs of Our Times: Discussion of Homi Bhabha’s he Location Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 51

Singaporean identity, as all modern In a related register to Purusho- Singaporeans are descended from thaman’s advocacy for a ‘national’ migrants, with their own original identity, Lee Wen allows his audience diasporic displacement. Any notion to crowd around him and looking of a monolithic Singaporean identity down in unison at him throughout was thus ruptured further through the performance (ig. 6), reconstruct- the processes of colonisation and ing the uniied colonial gaze in the decolonisation in the twentieth cen- experience of viewing. His exaggera- tury.38 Due to the lack of a unifying tion of the sick man stereotype at the ethno-historical originary myth held heart of the British Empire served by many countries, racial diversity to re-emphasise the Western domi- and subjective experiences form a nant vision of the mythical ‘Orient.’ natural barrier to the fostering of a By reconstructing this hierarchical national identity, instead promoting structure of power relations, Lee Wen a hyphenisation of one’s identity, draws on the subversive symbolism such as ‘Chinese-Singaporean’ or of his own surveillance and obedi- ‘Singaporean-Malay.’39 On a broader ence, urging the viewer to relect on scale, Singapore openly embraces cul- their perceived freedom versus Lee tural diversity, ultimately aiming to Wen’s self-exploitation. promote Singapore as an all-encom- However, struggles in the passing “in-between”, which at least spectator’s cultural translation inevi- to an extent, aligns with Bhabha’s tably arise, and one may wonder if notion of a a “third space”, one that Lee Wen’s process of art production espouses categorical ambivalence.40 can ever efectively encapsulate his Each rendition of the Yellow subjective experience for his audi- Man is site and culturally-speciic, ences to fully understand. Reading with the performance in India taking Lee Wen’s exaggeration of racial up a shamanistic signiication, and in diference as a self-Orientalized, or as hailand, a monarchic resonance.41 a mere generic experience depicting of Culture,” in he hird Text Reader: On Art, Culture, and heory, ed. Rasheed Araeen, Sean Cubitt, and Ziauddin Sardar (London ; New York: Continuum, 2002), 251-253. 38 J. R. Clammer, Race and State in Independent Singapore, 1965-1990: he Cultural Politics of Pluralism in a Multiethnic Society (Brookield, Vt: Ashgate, 1998), 32-35. 39 Chua Beng Huat, “Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control,” Race & Class 44, no. 3 (January 2003): 63–68, https://doi.org/10.1177/03 06396803044003025. 40 Bhabha, he Location of Culture, 70-75. 41 Võ Hồng Chồồng-Đài, “Line, Form, Colour, Action,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 48 (Spring 2019). 52 Of ‘Yellow’ identity tokenisation abroad to an relation to Bhabha’s theory of cul- international audience would suggest tural hybridity and Singapore’s mul- a level of neglect in understanding ticultural policies. However, when Singaporean race relations.42 Counter understanding the tension between to such interpretations, a Singapor- his own personal history and his acts ean’s emphasis on his skin colour of mediation, his performance reveals may not necessarily be intrinsically an act of subversion. While Lee Wen linked to race-based oppression, did not set out to efect social revolu- but is a key part of the local social tion, his performance exposed all fabric. Foregrounded by Singapore’s participants as political actors, who societal values of multi-ethnicity and in one way or another perpetuate multi-religion, this overt use of race their own agenda in the larger sphere is justiied. Bearing in mind that of identity politics. the artist has been conditioned by a As Lee Wen responded to society that places a large emphasis his own ‘Singaporean-Chinese’ post- on race (and racial cohesion), this colonial diasporic identity in 1992, contextual understanding is key to over time as the Yellow Man came to provide a robust reading of Lee Wen’s adopt new contexts, one can argue work. Instead, Lee Wen encourages that it mirrored the emergence of viewers to reconsider their own roles Singapore over the past thirty years. in relation to his personal histories, Following Singapore’s emergence as his yellowness subtly reveals the from its old reputation as a ‘cultural potential recognitions or misrecogni- desert’ to the ‘Renaissance City’: with tions of hybridity that are ultimately the rise of the cultural depictions of at stake.43 Singaporeans in Crazy Rich Asians, or following the emanation of new Conclusion local socio-cultural debates pertain- By performing what it ing to ‘Chinese privilege,’ Lee Wen’s meant to be ‘yellow’, Lee’s presenta- exposé of alterity provided a step- tion of ‘Asianness’ or ‘Chineseness’ pingstone for pluralistic conceptions framed the Yellow Man within the of Singaporean identity—distinct Orientalist gaze. his exaggerated and inarticulable to a singular form and monolithic ‘Asianness’ subverted of understanding. reductionist views of ethnicity or Almost thirty years on since belonging, which I have discussed in the Yellow Man was irst conceived,

42 Rey Chow, “From Writing Diaspora: Introduction: Leading Questions,” in he Rey Chow Reader, ed. Paul Bowman (Columbia University Press, 2010), 30–47, https://doi.org/10.7312/bowm14994.8. 43 Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, “Hybridity and Its Discontents: Consider- ing Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America*,” Colonial Latin American Review 12, no. 1 (June 2003): 5–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/10609160302341. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 53

Lee Wen’s sickly sheen of yellow has found its resonance again. Follow- ing the outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019, reports of racial aggravation towards Asian groups in the United Kingdom have risen, ef- fectively objectifying and homogenising all East Asians as “the virus”.44 In discussing the legacy of the Yellow Man in London, one might ask if the wider public’s comprehension of cultural transmigration will ever be a reality— after all, as revealed through Lee Wen’s seemingly paradoxical model of expression, inadequacies in understanding ultimately exacerbate and promote Orientalist views. Besides, it also tends to be the poet, intellectual, or artist who sustains ideas of disjuncture in society through their experience of displacement and production. But who can truly understand all its paradoxes?45 It is but the artist themselves.

44 Nosheen Iqbal, “Coronavirus Fears Fuel Racism and Hostility, Say British-Chi- nese,” he Guardian, February 1, 2020, sec. Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/feb/01/coronavirus-weaponised-way-to-be-openly-racist. 45 Jonathan Friedman, “Global Crises, the Struggle for Cultural Identity and In- tellectual Porkbarrelling: Cosmopolitans vs. Locals, Ethnics and Nationals in an Era of Dehomogenisation,” in Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, ed. Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, vol. Postcolonial encounters (London: Zed, 1997), 70–89. 54 Of ‘Yellow’

Figure 3. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Figure 4. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Figure 5. Photographic documentation Figures of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Figure 6. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 55

Figure 7. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Figure 8. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Figure 9. Photographic documentation of Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1 at City of London Polytechnic, London, 1992. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive. 56 Of ‘Yellow’

Ashleigh Chow is a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Class of 2021 where she studies History of Art. . Bibliography

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and Beyond, edited by Pnina Werbner, Martin Webb, and Kathryn Spellman-Poots, 320–40. Edinburgh University Press, 2014. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b683.19. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Revised Edition, from the ‘History’ Chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason.” In Can the Subaltern Speak? Relections on the History of an Idea, edited by Rosa- lind C. Morris. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Stoddard, Lothrop and Mazal Holocaust Collection. he Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1921. Tonkin, Steven and Victorian Arts Centre Trust. Political Acts: Pioneers of Performance Art in Southeast Asia., 2017. Urmila Seshagiri. “Modernity’s (Yellow) Perils: Dr. Fu-Manchu and English Race Paranoia.” Cultural Critique, no. 62 (2006): 162–94. Chương-Đài, Võ Hồng. “Line, Form, Colour, Action.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 48 (Spring 2019). Wee, C. J. W.-L. “Body and Communication: he ‘Ordinary’ Art of Tang Da Wu.” heatre Research International 42, no. 3 (October 2017): 286–306. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883317000591. Wee, C.J.W.-L. “he Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore.” In Charting houghts, edited by Low Sze Wee and Patrick D. Flores, 246–67. Essays on Art in Southeast Asia. National Gallery Singapore, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xpr6k.22. Wen, Lee. Artist’s statement, Journey of a Yellow Man No. 1, City of London Polytechnic, 1992. ———. “Performance Art in Context: A Singaporean Perspective.” Masters, La Salle College of Arts, 2006. https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/archive/lee-wen-archive-theses/object/performance-art-in- context-a-singaporean-perspective-185585. ———. “Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(V)Apid Changes.” In Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art, edited by Jefrey Say and Seng Yu Jin, 80–85. Singapore: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, 2016. Werbner, Pnina. “Essentialising Essentialism.” In Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, edited by Tariq Modood, Homi K. Bhabha, and Pnina Werbner. Critique, Inluence, Change. London: Zed Books, 2015. 吳政緯. “評楊瑞松，《病夫、黃禍與睡獅－「西方」視野中的中國形 25, no. 1 (2014): 205–15. 象與近代中國國族論述想像》.” 新史學 VA RI A 60 Reimagining Southaast Asian Postcoloniality Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality Local strategies of photographic representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines Jennifer Yang

Figure 1. Wimo Ambala Bayang, Sixteenth Force, 2008, c-print mounted on aluminium, 120 x 120 cm Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 61

Figure 2. Wimo Ambala Bayang, Fifteenth Force, 2008, c-print mounted on aluminium, 120 x 120 cm.

Abstract Of the few academic texts that survey and meaningfully analyse the works of contemporary Southeast Asian artists working with photographic media, even fewer have adopted an explicitly postcolonial approach to the subject matter. In order to address this gap in research, this analysis builds upon the writings of Allan Sekula, who envisions the camera as a productive ideological tool, and engages with Ali Behdad’s network theory of Orientalist and neo-Orien- talist photography to understand both the politics and history ofthe camera and the dynamics of contemporary photography in the regional context of Southeast Asia. In particular, the analysis examines works from three emerging artists—Wimo Ambala Bayang from Indonesia, Yee I-Lann from Malay- sia, Wawi Navarroza from the Philippines—and the ways in which they have challenged the conventions and colonial legacy of the photographic image through strategies of appropriation, counterarchiving, and hybridisation. Of- 62 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality ten deeply satirical and acutely self-aware, the works of Bayang, I-Lann and Navarroza respond not only to colonial histories and discourses, but also to ongoing processes of decolonisation and the construction of national identity in their respective contexts. Importantly, their manipulation of the photographic medium allows them to re-image and reimagine their socio-political surroundings in ways that resist the rigid conines of Self-Other, East-West and coloniser-colonised dichotomies while asserting autochthonous postcolonial representation. By closely studying these works, this analysis hopes to bring attention to the ways in which Southeast Asian artists are reclaiming and repurposing the camera to subvert colonial power structures, and to also inspire much-needed research into this growing and rapidly evolving domain of the Southeast Asian art world.

he development of photography Bayang from Indonesia, Yee I-Lann Tin the contemporary Southeast from Malaysia, and Wawi Navarroza Asian art scene is a recent from the Philippines. Often satirical phenomenon, and one that has and at times self-critical, the works largely been eclipsed by an interest of Bayang, Yee, and Navarroza in Chinese and Indian art in the interrogate concepts of postcolonial Western art world.1 At the same nationhood and identity while time, English-language scholarship probing the politics, histories and has frequently cast aside attempts uses of the camera in Southeast to meaningfully analyze the legacies Asia. More precisely, they re-image of colonialism in Southeast Asia Southeast Asian postcoloniality and instead has chosen to focus on through the appropriation and the turbulent or failed democratic subversion of colonial strategies transitions that apparently of photographic representation characterize the region.2 In an that have historically scrutinized, efort to address this double elision typiied and essentialized ‘Southeast of Southeast Asian photography Asianness’. In ofering indigenous and postcoloniality in Western reimaginings of their socio-political academia, this analysis will consider circumstance guided by a self- works from three contemporary relexive usage of the photographic photographers: Wimo Ambala medium, these photographers

1 Nora A. Taylor, “he Southeast Asian Art Historian as Ethnographer?”, hird Text 25, no. 4 (2011): 478, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2011.587948. 2 Chua Beng Huat, “Southeast Asia in Postcolonial Studies: An Introduction”, Postcolonial Studies 11, no. 3 (2008): 233, DOI: 10.1080/13688790802226637. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 63 challenge rigid and at times violent producing perception and binary concepts of East and West, reinforcing power hierarchies, is Self and Other, while simultaneously foundational to contemporary casting themselves as central nodes readings of both colonial and in complex postcolonial networks of postcolonial photographs. Further power, representation, and discourse. developments in the literature his analysis extends that are also relevant include upon a rich body of literature Ali Behdad’s network theory of located at the intersection Orientalist and neo-Orientalist between postcolonial studies photography from the Middle and photographic theory in East, in which he problematizes which Allan Sekula’s writings are the binary conceptual structures particularly seminal. Informed by of East and West, colonized and a Foucauldian interpretation of colonizing, and so on. Rather, power as being co-constitutive with Behdad envisions the proliferation processes of discourse formation, of “asymmetric and dispersed Sekula considered photography to relations between discrete objects, be guided by the twin objectives speciic actors and entities, and to aestheticize and taxonomize concrete practices and connections” the photographic referent, and as an alternative means of framing therefore a medium capable of discussions around the politics producing and/or reproducing of postcolonial photographic power relations. he function of representation.4 By applying these photographic practice, as Sekula theoretical viewpoints to studies theorizes, is therefore intimately of contemporary Southeast Asian linked to a kind of “instrumental photography, this analysis hopes realism” whereby the camera, to extract new meanings and particularly in colonial contexts, interpretations from the rich body enables “the systematic naming, of work emerging from the region, categorization, and isolation and to understand such work with of an otherness thought to be reference to ongoing processes determined by biology...”3 his of indigenous identity formation idea that photography may in the regional construct that is serve as an ideological tool, Southeast Asia.5

3 Allan Sekula, “he Traic in Photographs”, Art Journal 41, no. 1 (1981): 15-16. DOI: 10.1080/00043249.1981.10792441. 4 Ali Behdad, “Orientalism and the Politics of Representation”, Trans-Asia Photography Review 10, no. 2 (2020): 1+. Available at: hdl.handle.net/2027/ spo.7977573.0010.203. 5 he understanding of Southeast Asia as a socio-political construct is greatly indebted to the works of both Edward Said and Benedict Anderson and their respec- 64 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality

and foreign inluence as well as Wimo Ambala Bayang a post-New Order9 vision of a democratic polity held accountable In the Indonesian by the people.10 It is against this contemporary art scene, a long- milieu, that Ruang Mes 56—the standing ontic divide between art Yogyakarta-based photographic and photography has relegated collective of which Wimo Ambala the medium to the realms of Bayang is a founding member— commercial enterprise and emerges as a distinct example of personal entertainment.6 To contemporary photography that reference James Siegel’s writings, redeploys the camera in ongoing the lingering legacy of the camera negotiations of Indonesian identity in Indonesian memory as a and postcolonial nationhood. colonial instrument for the dual Created as part of an purposes of “scientiic recording art residency program themed [and] aesthetic rendering,”7 now “Landing Soon”, Bayang’s 2008 takes the form of a common eleven-photo series, Belanda Sudah association of photography Dekat! (he Dutch are Already with budaya dokumentasi, or a Near!) ofers insight into the “culture of documentation.”8 politics of power in representations As Karen Strassler has observed, of the Javanese subject. Depicting the photograph has primarily an eclectic demographic cross- functioned as a form of record section of Yogyakarta, which in both a practical and discursive features crossdressers and punks sense, birthed from a concept of alongside farmworkers and elderly dokumentasi—a Dutch loanword women, Bayang pictorializes the tethered to notions of bureaucracy tive development of the concepts of “imaginative geographies” and “imagined communities. See: Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). And Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: relections on the origin and spread of nationalism (New York: Schocken, 1983). 6 Lisa Catt, “Contemporary Indonesian photomedia: An ever-present past”, Pho- tofle, no. 94 (2014): 62. Available at: search-informit-com- au.ezproxy2.library.usyd. edu.au/documentSummary;dn=527881892350671;res=IELAPA> ISSN: 0811- 0859. 7 James T. Siegel, Objects and Objections of Ethnography (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 77. 8 Karen Strassler, Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 16. 9 “New Order” refers to the period of Imperial Japanese rule from 1938 to the end of World War Two. 10 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 17. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 65 heterogeneity of the Indonesian reciprocity. With the camera population, taking as referent both angle positioned at a low angle, marginal and mainstream members the schoolgirls are framed in the of the community. Varying degrees upper third of the composition, of uniformity are visible across each positioned in exaggerated all eleven images, expressed in contrapposto stances with one coordinated and, at times, identical leg cocked on the plinth of what or standardized attire, combined appears to be a colonial statue of with a persistent compositional a cannon. Bayang thus lends a symmetry in the postures of subject certain agency and authority to the bodies. In Sixteenth Force (ig. 1.), subjects, who gaze down toward for example, three schoolgirls are the viewer with stern expressions shown clad in ankle-length blue- and an air of vigilance, ampliied grey skirts, white long-sleeved comedically by the plastic weapons blouses and hijabs typical of they wield. Indonesian upper secondary school he presence of the water (SMA) uniforms—there is little to pistols, however, is not merely no variation or hint of idiosyncrasy for comedic relief; as a recurring in their dress, except for the color motif across all 11 images, the of their shoes and a plastic watch weapons stand in as a reminder of on one girl’s wrist. In the process of the violent history of the colonial selecting, grouping, and therefore era and the New Order, as well as typifying such subjects within the enduring prevalence of racial a square photographic image to microaggressions in postcolonial be placed and viewed among Indonesia. More overt clues lie in others, Bayang replicates colonial the names given to the individual strategies of representation or works—each representing a ‘force’, what Brian Wallis has described as numbered ordinally in reference to “representational colonialism.”11 the “Fifth Force”, a militia proposed Rather than attempting to by Sukarno during the mid-1960s. transcend colonial conceptions of he title of the series also inverts a the photograph as both a form of commonly used phrase in Javanese empirical documentation and an vernacular, “Belanda masih jauh”, aesthetic exercise, Bayang instead or “the Dutch are still far”, which is satirizes this logic by constructing typically preixed by an imperative a typological photograph that to ‘relax’ or ‘slow down’.12 is punctuated with a degree of Borrowed from the

11 Brian Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Slave Daguerreo- types”, American Art 9, no. 2 (1995): 54-55, DOI: 10.1086/424243. 12 “Belanda Sudah Dekat!”, Wimo Ambala Bayang, 2010, wimoambalabayang. 66 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality colonial period of warring between banana trees. he image is riddled the Dutch and the independence with optical contradictions: the movement, the phrase has come to anonymous, alien-like forms of the signify an ethos of laziness within subjects appear out of place against contemporary Indonesian society13 a familiar scene of provincial – a mythic stereotype created central Java; the tarnished metallic and conferred upon Javanese tones of the costumes clash with identities by mid-19th century the fading gradient of the blue Dutch colonial discourses, but also sky; and the over-the-top detail of perpetuated through local usage painted armour seems incongruous and circulation.14 By reinjecting with the humble façade of a the inverted phrase with a sense distant residence. Such visual of urgency and casting citizens as discontinuities produce a sense of mock members of ‘armed’ forces, disconnect between homeland and Bayang reactivates sites of anti- inhabitant, complicating visions colonial resistance within ordinary of Indonesian postcoloniality spaces, constructing scenes of that centre on the Self-Other skirmish in which viewers are dichotomy. Instead, Bayang’s positioned as foreign invaders work appreciates the existence confronting an alien ‘Other’. of multiple multidirectional Bayang also leaves room vectors of power that collectively for ambiguity in such encounters sustain legacies of colonial between the viewer and subject, representation and discourse in the supposed Self and Other. his post-Independence Indonesia. In is particularly palpable in Fifteenth these self-relexive, often humorous Force (ig. 2.), wherein three photographs, colonial conlict and individuals, dressed in costumes violence emerges from nowhere in inspired by Japanese tokusatsu particular – it is unclear whether ilms, pose theatrically in an empty the subjects are weaponized against land lot (pekarangan) bordered by the viewer, or against their own com/portfolio/belanda- sudah-dekat/. 13 See, for example: “Belanda Sudah Dekat! by Wimo Ambala Bayang”, Ruang Mes 56, 2008, mes56.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/belanda-sudah-dekat-by-wimo- ambala-bayang/.=. Or: Tom Allard, “Better to slow down and go with the low.” he Age (Melbourne, Australia), July 24, 2010, 17. link-gale- com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/apps/ doc/A278217667/AONE?u=usyd&sid=AONE&xid=70f26 “Belanda Masih Jauh”, Chairil Gibran Ramadhan, 2020, jernih.co/solilokui/santuuuybelanda-masih-jauh. 14 Syed Hussein Alatas, he Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2013), 62. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 67 environment. Bayang therefore describes this technique as parodies an over simplistic image “speculative photomontage”, of Indonesian postcoloniality that that is, the digital manipulation conlates decolonization with of archival photographs in military triumph and territorial order to create subversive independence. Viewers are instead “conjectural moments” that invited to re-evaluate the idea of reassert autochthonous control Indonesian independence and to over representations of both consider the complex network of coloniality and postcoloniality.”15 actors that guide and inluence Like Bayang’s series, the representations of Indonesia. political didacticism of the works is voiced in wordy titles. In Wherein one Yee I-Lann in the name of knowledge, measures everything, gives it a name and While Bayang’s work publicizes this, thereby claiming it (ig. draws upon interactions in his 3.), images of bodies and the natural hometown Yogyakarta, Yee landscape are collaged together in a I-Lann’s 2013 series, Picturing panoramic expanse, reading from left Power, investigates broader to right in narrative sequence. In the themes of Southeast Asian image’s leftmost third, a trio of men, postcoloniality, making little presumably engineers, in Western- reference to Malay(si)a-speciic style white shirts with ties are iconography or culture. In a hunched over a large table, mapping series of eight digital collages, out a construction project. An Yee re-presents images sourced open door segues from the interior from the archives of Amsterdam’s scene to the landscape outside, ethnographic Tropenmuseum— which is being surveyed by colonial or, in English, the Museum of igures with various measuring the Tropics. Printed in black instruments. Colonial power here and white on cotton rag paper, is subtle and administrative, linked the works vary in size with some to the production of knowledge reaching 1.8 meters in length. In and disguised by the project of these large-scale works, objects, geographical science. As Mohabir, unixed from their original in reference to the recurring motif source material, are rearranged of European-style furnishing in Yee’s and suspended in a boundless works, suggests, “the violence of these white void, resembling ghostly forms of power was/is as ubiquitous dreamscapes. Nalini Mohabir

15 Nalini Mohabir, “Yee I-Lann: Photomontage as counter-mapping”, Cultural Dynamics 31, no. 3 (2019): 263, DOI: 10.1177/0921374019855550. 68 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality

Figure 3. Yee I-Lann, Wherein one in the name of knowledge, measures everything, gives it a name and publicizes this, thereby claiming it, 2013, giclée print on cotton rag paper, 63 x 180 cm.

Figure 4. Yee I-Lann, Wherein one nods with political sympathy and says I understand you better than you understand yourself, I’m just here to help you help yourself, 2013, giclée print on cotton rag paper, 63 x 63 cm and utilitarian as a table.”16 Although dashed lines and literally cleaved Yee invokes these colonial power apart by the bridge, is penetrated dynamics through the photographic by white negative space, which medium, she does so self-rel exively, evinces both the threat of erasure, fracturing image within image and of disappearance into the archive, disrupting the linearity of western and the promise of reconstruction perception, visually manifest in and re-temporalization. Indeed, the horizon line of the mountain Yee’s work actuates John Roberts’ terrain.17 h e landscape, divided by idea of the archive as “a productive

16 Mohabir, “Yee I-Lann”, 262. 17 Photographer Brook Andrew considers the habitual presence of the horizon line as an “aspect of male conquest and dominance”, projecting a dominant West- ern vision that seeks to universalise and colonise. See, “Brook Andrew: Possessed”, Grazia Gunn, 2015, archive.brookandrew.com/post/130992145106/brook-andrew- possessed. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 69 machine for meaning”, never neutral blurred and translucent, recede nor randomized, but existing as into space, collaged into the “intellectually organized forms shape of a igurative nation. At of rationalization” in continuous the very front of the image, two motion.18 In reclaiming and orang besar (literally “big people” reorganizing photography from in both scale and status) are the archive, Yee engages in a seated in positions of power – a “practice of counterproduction, of local sultan and a colonial igure counterarchiving, of interruption clothed in white and wearing a and reordering of the event.”19 Such pith helmet, an archetypal feature subversive play that deconstructs and of European colonial uniforms re-images colonial paradigms allows in tropical climes. Once again, Yee to cast herself as an agential actor the table as a symbol of colonial in representations of Southeast Asian violence igures in the foreground history and contemporality. with its three bowed legs and Yee’s interrogation of the the boots of the white man—an colonial imagination continues obtrusive detail amongst the in Wherein one nods with political crowd of people with hidden sympathy and says I understand or bare feet—simultaneously you better than you understand anchoring and propping up the yourself, I’m just here to help you loating mass of bodies in an ironic help yourself (see ig. 4.). As visualization of the concept of the suggested by Yee’s co-optation ‘white man’s burden’ and its role of a colonizing voice in the title in the ideological construction of and by assembling the crouching nationhood. Rather than simply igures into the crude form of a reproducing ethnographic images mapped nation, not dissimilar to of the colonized Other, however, the shape of Peninsular Malaysia, Yee’s constructed photomontage the work probes power imbalances activates what Catherine Lutz and in colonial representations of Jane Collins have described as, Southeast Asian bodies. he well- “a dynamic site at which many rendered detail of facial features gazes or viewpoints intersect.”20 and expressions preserves a degree In the only image of the series of individual autonomy, although that features so many subjects this diminishes as the faces, some (with varying degrees of power)

18 John Roberts, Photography and Its Violations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 113. 19 Ibid., 114. 20 Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago: Chi- cago University Press, 1993), 187. 70 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality gazing directly into the lens, Yee relexive and experimental use accents the multiplicity, diversity, of the photographic medium, in and partiality of looks that which Navarrozza subverts the inform colonial and postcolonial factuality of the image. Vibrant representations of Southeast Asia. and lattened in appearance, they Just as Indo-Malayan colonies condense an immense amount developed as gradated power of detail into a singular plane systems involving lower-class disrupted by digital cut-and- colonial subjects, local elites, pastes, inducing tensions between colonists, and those in-between, authenticity and ictionality that contemporary imaginings of the play out across the pictorial surface Southeast Asian world continue but also structure Navarroza’s to be sustained by networks of interrogation of Filipino identity. power relations between objects, Indeed, her reference to the title actors, and entities. It is this of Filipino novelist Nick Joaquin’s network that Yee animates in her book “Tropical Gothic” (1972) photomontages, inviting viewers links her work to a recurring to not only consider the politics theme in contemporary Philippine of their own gaze, but also that of art, which Paul Sharrad, in his the artist, the archivist, and the analysis of Joaquin’s text, explains photographer. as a “certain schizophrenia in the Philippine sense of identity.”21 Wawi Navarroza his notion features particularly strongly in Remember A contemporary Filipino Who You Are (Strange Fruit/he photographer working primarily Other Asian, Self-Portrait with in self-portraiture, Wawi Pineapple) (See ig. 5.) wherein Navarroza recently hosted her Navarroza, adopting the roles of irst solo exhibition in 2019— both photographer and muse, Self-Portraits and the Tropical poses against a brilliant red Gothic” —comprised of eight backdrop hung against a kitschy large-format, framed tableaux loral wallpaper of turquoise vivants teeming with symbols and green. Capturing one of the and cultural information. Her artist’s most dramatic alterations extravagant mise-en-scènes— in physical appearance, the generated through careful lighting work is structured by a sense techniques and postproduction of ambivalence and slippage in manipulation—showcase a self-

21 Paul Sharrad, “Echoes and antecedents: Nick Joaquin’s Tropi- cal Gothic”, World Literature Written in English 20, no. 2 (1981): 355, DOI: 10.1080/17449858108588692. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 71

Figure 5. Wawi Navar- roza, Remember Who You Are (Strange Fruit/ h e Other Asian, Self- Portrait with Pine- apple), 2019, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, cold-mounted on acid- free aluminium, with artist’s exhibition frame, 114.3 x 86.36 cm. cultural identity with Navarroza with a sense of sacrosanctity that donning an artii cial blonde wig has been amplii ed by the presence and blue contact lenses. With of ornamental objects and a Navarroza pictured gazing beyond frame. As Ernest Hans Gombrich the frame, appearing to sit in writes, “the richer the elements contemplation, the image emulates of the frame, the more the center and appropriates the iconography will gain in dignity.”22 Navarroza of Catholic saint portraiture. h is simultaneously embodies act of mimicry allows Navarroza and pictures the stereotyped to not only satirize the legacy of physiognomy of both Self and the Spanish Catholic imagination Other, occupying a liminal space of in the Philippines, but to also in-betweenness that Homi Bhabha elevate the subaltern Filipino to claims to represent an “ironic hagiographic status, imbuing her compromise” in a representational

22 Ernest Hans Gombrich, h e Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decora- tive Art (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 156, quoted in David Carrier, A World Art History and Its Objects (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 101. 72 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality strategy that “‘appropriates’ the artiicial lowers—red and yellow Other as it visualizes power.”23 In heliconia, bird-of-paradise, and picturing herself as a self-titled purple orchids—frame her proile, ‘Other Asian’, Navarroza asks feeding into the scenography of viewers to think beyond the static a tropical idyll. he orchids in categories of Self and Other, particular, are laden with cultural ofering an entry point into a more signiicance; as Jim Endersby self-critical representation of a describes, they came to symbolize, hybrid Southeast Asian identity to the European eye, “the romance that recognizes its basis in a and opportunity of empire” complex and ongoing history of and the “humid, exotic, sensual cultural interchange between the worlds” they were extracted from.24 Philippines and its colonizer. Navarroza’s symbolic play is most Such strategies of salient in the mutated pineapple subversion are not only cited she holds, which she names a in Navarroza’s representation “Strange Fruit”,25 alluding to the of self but play out also in enduring presence of tropical her elaborate arrangements of fruit in the Western imagination objects. For example, Navarroza as an emblem of exotica, arousing drapes herself in a deep blue both revulsion and fascination.26 kimono patterned with cranes Yet, the strangeness of Navarroza’s and peonies—a reference to East pineapple is not merely physical, Asian inluence and the 1942-45 but also a consequence of its period of Japanese interregnum lineage. Introduced through in the Philippines. To her left, Spanish contact as a colonial

23 Homi Bhabha, he Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 122. 24 Jim Endersby, Orchid: Cultural History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016), 127, 128. 25 A diferent postcolonial reading of the title may associate it with the song written by Abel Meeropol in 1937 as protest against the lynching of black Americans which was graphically captured in images such as Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the 1930 lynching of homas Shipp and Abram Smith. Although this analysis does not explore such a reading, it comprises another rich and complex ield of postcolonial inquiry, generating questions surrounding issues of violence against black bodies, Western visual pleasure, and the camera as an ideological instrument. See, for example: Mark Sealy, “Violence of the Image”, in Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (London: Lawrence and Wishart Limited, 2019), 106-157. 26 Andrea Montanari, “he Stinky King: Western Attitudes toward the Durian in Colonial Southeast Asia”, Food, Culture and Society 20, no. 3 (2017): 395-414. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2017.1337389. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 73 crop, transformed into a sartorial strategies.30 Here, as in Remember signiier of status and foreign Who You Are, slippage in exoticism in the form of Piña Navarroza’s racial and cultural (pineapple iber) textile,27 and identity is echoed in the blending now mass-imported by Europe of colonial and indigenous stylistic and northern America from the formats. By appropriating a visual Philippines,28 the pineapple’s language that is intelligible to genealogy mirrors the hybrid the West and redeploying it as nature of a constructed Filipino a means to destabilize colonial identity. By crowding her self- binaries and constructions of portraits with these culturally- racialized diference, Navarroza coded objects, Navarroza accesses is able to reform and indigenize an elusive Filipino identity that, representations of Southeast Asian as she notes, is embodied in the identity and postcoloniality. excessive displays of the Filipino In the hopes of ofering a sari-sari (variety) store but also cursory glimpse into the diversity “laced with a Spanish colonial of contemporary photography baroque hangover.”29 In a similar emerging from Southeast Asia, manner to the postcolonial genre this analysis has closely studied of Latin American neo-baroque, works by three artists from the as theorized by César Salgado, region – Wimo Ambala Bayang Navarroza’s congested compositions from Indonesia, Yee I-Lann from mock and mimic “hegemonic, Malaysia and Wawi Navarroza difusionist, and acculturating” from the Philippines. It is worth European formats—the baroque noting in these inal relections that style—in order to generate the works and practices of each “emancipating, autochthonous, of these artists not only deal with and transculturating” aesthetic topical issues around the politics

27 Mina Roces, “Dress, Status, and Identity in the Philippines: Pineapple Fibre Cloth and Ilustrado Fashion”, Fashion heory 17, no. 3 (2013), 341-372, DOI: 10.27 52/175174113X13597248661828. 28 According to 2018 datasets from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the Philippines is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of pineapple alongside Costa Rica and Brazil. See: “FAOSTAT: Crops Data”, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, last updated June 15, 2020, fao.org/ faostat/en/#data/QC. 29 Quoted from Navarroza’s artist statement on her website. See: “Self Portraits and the Tropical Gothic”, Wawi Navarroza, 2019, wawinavarroza.com/self-portraits- the-tropical-gothic. 30 César A. Salgado, “Hybridity in New World Baroque heory”, he Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (1999): 316, DOI: 10.2307/541365. 74 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality of postcolonial representation, the colonial legacy of the camera but also actively contribute to an in the Southeast Asian context and indigenous reconceptualization insert themselves as central actors of the role and potential of within postcolonial networks of the camera as a discursive representation, it becomes all the instrument in Southeast Asia. more essential that their works are In Bayang’s series, a reassertion studied as part of an expanding of local agency is actualized in global art historical canon. his satirical parodies of images of colonial warfare as well as the typological tendencies of colonial photographic representation. A similarly subversive act takes place in Yee’s interrogation of the colonial archive and the consequent creation of a dialogic space in which viewers are able to critically engage with colonial past and consider its contemporary legacy. For Navarroza, the appropriation of Western aesthetics and the creation of a hybrid cultural identity through photographic manipulation is key to the unravelling of colonial dichotomies of East-West, Self- Other, and colonizer-colonizing and in reclaiming representational authority. Yet beyond such surveys of the thematic undercurrents and visual strategies of the works of Bayang, Yee and Navarroza, it is also the creation, exhibition, viewership and scholarship of such works that power indigenous representations of Southeast Asian postcoloniality and ongoing processes of decolonization in the region. As contemporary artists such as Bayang, Yee and Navarroza continue to confront Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 75

Jennifer Yang is a student at the University of Sydney, Class of 2022, where she studies a Bachelor of Art History and Interna- tional Relations, as well as a Diploma of Language minoring in Indonesian Studies. Bibliography

Alatas, Syed Hussein. he Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism. London: Routledge, 2013. Allard, Tom. “Better to slow down and go with the low.” he Age (Melbourne). July 24, 2010, 17. link-gale- com.ezproxy2.library. usyd.edu.au/apps/doc/A278217667/AONE?u=usyd&sid=AON E&xid=70f268f6. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: relections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York: Schocken, 1983. Bayang, Wimo Ambala. “Belanda Sudah Dekat!”. wimoambalabayang.com. 2010. wimoambalabayang.com/portfolio/ belanda-sudah-dekat/. Behdad, Ali. “Orientalism and the Politics of Representation”. Trans-Asia Photography Review 10, no. 2 (2020): 1+. Available at: hdl.handle. net/2027/spo.7977573.0010.203. Bhabha, Homi. he Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Carrier, David. A World Art History and Its Objects. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Catt, Lisa. “Contemporary Indonesian photomedia: An ever-present past”. Photofle, no. 94 (2014): 55-62. Available at: search-informit- com- au.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=5278818 92350671;res=IEL APA> ISSN: 0811-0859. Endersby, Jim. Orchid: Cultural History. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016. Gunn, Grazia.“Brook Andrew: Possessed”. archive.brookandrew. com. 2015. archive.brookandrew.com/post/130992145106/brookandrew-possessed. Huat, Chua Beng. “Southeast Asia in Postcolonial Studies: An Introduction”. Postcolonial Studies 11, no. 3 (2008): 231-240, DOI: 10.1080/13688790802226637. Lutz, Catherine and Jane Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993. Mohabir, Nalini. “Yee I-Lann: Photomontage as counter-mapping”. Cultural 76 Reimagining Southeast Asian Postcoloniality

Dynamics 31, no. 3 (2019): 260-275. DOI: 10.1177/0921374019855550. Montanari, Andrea. “he Stinky King: Western Attitudes toward the Durian in Colonial Southeast Asia”. Food, Culture and Society 20, no. 3 (2017): 395-414. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2017.1337389. Navarroza, Wawi. “Self Portraits and the Tropical Gothic”. wawinavarroza.com. 2019. wawinavarroza.com/self-portraits-the-tropical-gothic. Ramadhan, Chairil Gibran. “Belanda Masih Jauh”. jernih.co. 2020. jernih.co/solilokui/santuuuybelanda-masih-jauh. Roberts, John. Photography and Its Violations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Roces, Mina. “Dress, Status, and Identity in the Philippines: Pineapple Fibre Cloth and Ilustrado Fashion”. Fashion heory 17, no. 3 (2013), 341- 372, DOI: 10.2752/175174113X13597248661828. Ruang Mes 56. “Belanda Sudah Dekat! by Wimo Ambala Bayang”. kantorberita.mes56.com. 2008, mes56.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/ belanda-sudah-dekat-by-wimo-ambala- bayang/.=. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Salgado, César A. “Hybridity in New World Baroque heory”. he Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (1999): 316-331, DOI: 10.2307/541365. Sealy, Mark. Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time. London: Lawrence and Wishart Limited, 2019. Sekula, Allan. “he Traic in Photographs”. Art Journal 41, no. 1 (1981), pp.15- 25. DOI: 10.1080/00043249.1981.10792441. Sharrad, Paul. “Echoes and antecedents: Nick Joaquin’s Tropical Gothic”. World Literature Written in English 20, no. 2 (1981): 355-366, DOI: 10.1080/17449858108588692 Siegel, James T. Objects and Objections of Ethnography. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. Taylor, Nora A. “he Southeast Asian Art Historian as Ethnographer?”. hird Text 25, no. 4 (2011): 475-488, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2011.587948. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. “FAOSTAT: Crops Data”. fao.org. Last updated June 15, 2020. fao.org/faostat/en/#data/ QC. Wallis, Brian. “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Slave Daguerreotypes”. American Art 9, no. 2 (1995): 38-61, DOI: 10.1086/424243. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 77 Stone Trees and Holy Forests An Investigation into the Pagan Origins of the Georgian Cross Pillar Calista Blanchard

Abstract Between the 5th and 8th centuries, monumental stone pillars, covered in relief and topped with crosses, dominated the Geor- gian rural landscape. h ese monuments, known as cross pillars, survive only in fragments: their function, purpose, and origins remain largely undeciphered. As one of the i rst nations to convert to Christianity, some scholars point to Georgia’s earliest-recorded Christian miracles as the source of the cross pillars. However, I demonstrate that these miracles were clearly inspired by a pre- existing Caucasian belief system – wherein followers worshipped holy trees and forests. h rough tying together Georgia’s religious, literary, and artistic past, this paper argues that the cross pillars were syncretic monuments, formed from a combination of new Christian ideologies and existing polytheistic beliefs. I conclude that the local peoples reused polytheistic visual and iconographical vocabularies to understand the new religion, indicating that cross pillars were Christian, stone interpretations of the region’s sacred trees. Figure 1. Relief on eastern façade of Edzani Sion (6th ce.), Kvemo Kartli, Georgia. 78 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

he stone cross pillars of medieval this structure evokes the Anastasis TGeorgia are a largely unique Rotunda from the Church of the phenomenon. As monolithic monu- Holy Sepulcher.3 he shaft of the ments decorated in relief, scholars pillar is decorated with symmetrical tend to add them to the list of early zig-zags, trisected by vertical lines. medieval decorative sculpture that hese qualities generally contrast grew in popularity from around the with surviving cross pillars, as the ifth century. he physical rem- majority prioritize igural relief nants of these crosses – much like and few examples of the Anastasis our understanding of them – are, Rotunda have been uncovered. From however, fragmentary. Extant are discovered examples, it is clear that a few dozen samples of bases and cross pillars existed as open-air struc- crosses, with additional pieces of the tures. Until this point, scholars have pillars themselves in varying stages rooted cross pillars and their relief of decomposition. he scarcity of in a irmly Christian context. In the surviving examples is due to the use process, they have overlooked how of local materials, such as limestone, the relationship between ornament, which are easy to carve but suscep- tree worship, and Christian conver- tible to erosion and damage. Despite sion tactics reveal the monuments’ the lack of any complete models, possible pre-Christian origins and the original composition of the cross cultic functions. For the purposes of pillars is suggested by a 6th-century exploring this relationship, attention relief on the eastern façade of the will be given speciically to a collec- Edzani Sion church, located in the tion of bases and pillars from the Kvemo Kartli region (ig. 1). On the 5th – 7th centuries that contain or façade, the artist has depicted an or- prioritize ornament. namented pillar with a base, erected he Natlismtsemeli, Didi on a three-tiered platform, topped Gomareti and Kataula pillars are late with the so-called Bolnisi cross.1 6th to early 7th century cross pillar Between the cross and the column fragments, named for the villages in stands a row of arched arcades atop a which they were found. Each pillar capital, crowned with a semi-circular is notable in that it devotes between dome.2 Scholars generally agree that one and three of its four sides to

1 A variant of the cross pattée, as seen in a 5th-century ornament at the Bolnisi Sioni church. 2 We cannot be certain to what degree this is the standard composition of the cross pillar. he architectural structure of the arcades and their placement on the cross pillar varies from fragment to fragment, and most surviving columns do not contain one at all. 3 Tamar Dadiani et al., Medieval Georgian Sculpture, 45-46; Gagoshidze, “Jerusa- lem in Medieval Georgian Art” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, 133-134. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 79 ornament. he decision of which ally depict Christian iconographic side is represented by igural art, programs. Tamar Dadiani, Ekaterine ornamented, or left unadorned is Kvachatadze, and Tamar Khundadze, indicated by direction: the primary in their Medieval Georgian Sculpture, igural composition would adorn the devote a chapter to scholarly re- west-facing side, the east “rear” side search on the Georgian cross pillars. would be left unadorned or embel- Alternatively, Zaza Skhirtladze has lished with loral ornament, and the used the stelae and their inscriptions north and south faces could be either as documents for the people and do- igural or strictly ornamental. In their mestic politics depicted.5 he body original locations, viewers of the of existing stone crosses and their cross pillars would be facing the east programs have also been cataloged when regarding the “front” of the by Kitty Machabelli in her Early monuments.4 his pattern is similar Medieval Georgian Stone Crosses. In a in the case of all aforementioned separate work, Machabelli also covers pillars. Equally notable for the pur- the secular aspects of the stone cross poses of this research are examples pillars and how the social develop- of vegetal relief on surviving bases ment of K’art’li, now present-day and fragments of cross pillars. Such Georgia,6 afected them aesthetically.7 ornament is seen on the Pantiani and he signiicant role of Machabelli’s Ukangori bases, as well as the Bolnisi work in the formation of this paper cross pillar fragment. his speciic cannot be deemphasized – without collection of 5th to 7th-century cross her photographic and analytic contri- pillar fragments was chosen because butions, information regarding the of their inclusion of loral, vegetal cross pillars would be nearly inacces- designs, and plant-like ornament. sible. Hitherto, scholars with an Since Machabelli’s ultimate interest in early medieval Georgian goal is to examine the creation and relief have chosen to focus on and development of the unique Christian explore the igural compositions igural iconography presented on on the cross pillars, which gener- the crosses, she does not give much

4 Ancient Christian prayer was conducted in the direction of the east, in accor- dance with the belief that the “the sign of the Son of man,” the cross, would appear in the east with the second coming (Matthew 25:27-30) 5 Zaza Skhirtladze, “სტელის ფრაგმენტი მცხეთის წმ. ჯვრის ტაძრიდან” [“he Fragment of Stela from the Jvari Church of Mtskheta,”] 325- 387. 6 K’art’li is a historical region and former kingdom in central Georgia, before the creation of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1008 AD. 7 Kitty Machabeli, “Early Medieval Stelae in Georgia in the Context of East Chris- tian Art,” in Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus, 83-96. 80 Stone Trees and Holy Forests attention to the ornamental designs tion of the 4th-century conversion of or the origins of the cross pillars the kingdom of K’art’li can be found themselves, apart from connecting in Ruinus of Aquileia’s early 5th- them to wooden crosses placed by century History of the Church. In his Saint Nino, who is credited with documentation of one of the world’s converting Georgia to Christianity. irst kingdoms to oicially convert to hough ornament has been featured the Christian faith, Ruinus describes consistently in the compositions miracles performed by an unnamed of the cross pillars, deeper analysis “captive woman” – in later sources, of the ornamentation has largely this woman is named Nino.11 In been ignored, or it has been deemed one miracle, the woman instructs wholly decorative and secondary the newly-converted Georgian to the igural compositions of the king, Mirian, to construct a church; stelae.8 As cataloged by Owen Jones one by one, his workers raise the in his exhaustive account on histori- wooden pillars of the building, but cal ornamental styles, ornament has they ind the third pillar could not been most traditionally considered be lifted above halfway. All night, an “accessory to architecture.”9 Nino prayed over the pillar, and in However, as argued by scholars the morning, the wooden pillar was Fahetme Ahani, Irai Etessam, and “suspended upright just above its Seved Islami, it is through ornament base: not placed upon it, but hanging that one might identify the “desires, about one foot in the air.”12 In front activities, and beliefs” of its creator.10 of the awe-struck crowd, the pillar hus, ornament may play a critical then lowered itself onto its base. his role in deciphering the origins and is the story of the “Life-giving Pillar.” traditions behind the creation of the hough the original pillar has since cross-pillar phenomenon. disappeared, the cathedral where it In order to further explore was housed, Svetitskhoveli (literally the relationship between Christian- the “Life-giving Pillar”) in the city ity and the cross pillar, a discussion of Mtskheta,13 remains the most on the aforementioned story of Saint important and venerated church in Nino and her conversion of Georgia Georgian Orthodoxy. he tale is later is necessary. he earliest documenta- developed in Leonti Mroveli’s 11th-

8 Ibid, 83-85. 9 Owen Jones, he Grammar of Ornament: A Visual Reference of Form and Colour in Architecture and the Decorative Arts, 470. 10 Ahani et al., “he Distinction of Ornament and Decoration in Architecture,” 25-26. 11 Ruinus of Aquileia, History of the Church, 397. 12 Ibid, 399. 13 Capital of K’art’li until the 5th century. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 81 century he Conversion of K’art’li by dral, where it miraculously stayed Nino. In this hagiographical retell- fresh for thirty-seven days until being ing, Mroveli expands far beyond the formed into crosses.15 According to contexts of the original Ruinus text, the account, crosses of ire appeared documenting Saint Nino’s family his- from the heavens and moved towards tory, her many miracles, and her life. the east and west, which Saint Nino he Life-giving Pillar, in particular, interpreted to the people as signs has drastically changed – the story of where the revered crosses should has become steeped in a more intense be placed. After the crosses were Christian rhetoric. he wooden pil- placed, Saint Nino went up to the lar, now shining with “true light,” is hill in Mtskheta and had a bishop alleged to have been built from a ce- “inscribe a cross” on the stone, which dar tree in proximity to Jesus’ robe.14 the people then worshipped.16 his he Pillar has also been imbued with story ends with a declaration by the ability to heal: the blind, para- Mroveli that the “noble [ones]” of lyzed, and sick are cured through K’art’li, having seen the “unparal- touching or praying near the pillar. leled miracles and inefable healings,” It is in these revisions and additions did not stray from the “holy church, that the Life-giving Pillar becomes the column of light, and the living a clear invocation of the “sacred cross.”17 Today, the Jvari Church tree,” a motif that has been recorded stands on the site of this miracle, within numerous Indo-European looking down on Mtskheta and Sve- belief systems as a source of healing titskhoveli Cathedral. and eternal life. It is evident that the two Mroveli’s account of the monuments – the Life-giving Pillar conversion of Georgia continues to and the Revered Cross – underwent, explore the connection between the over time, a kind of transformative Life-giving Pillar and the sacred tree. conlation. his conlation is ex- In one chronicle, Mroveli describes a plored in another section of Mroveli’s beautiful tree with the ability to heal Chronicle. During the reign of King the sick and mortally wounded. he Mirdat (408-410), it is said that the “former heathens'' – the converted Georgians began to take pieces of people of K’art’li – cut down the wood from the living pillar and make tree at the behest of the bishop and them into crosses. After allowing the placed it near Svetitskhoveli Cathe- further construction of a number

14 Mroveli, “Conversion of K’art’li by Nino,” in Rewriting Caucasian History: he Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles, 127. 15 Ibid, 133-4. 16 Ibid, 135. 17 Ibid, 136. 82 Stone Trees and Holy Forests of crosses, Mirdat surrounded the relief compositions would have car- remains of the pillar with stone and ried some spiritual weight. Although topped it with a cross made from Jones calls ornament an “idealiza- the pillar. he speciic imagery used tion [of the] forms of nature,”19 it is here by Mroveli seems to correspond clear that the low-relief vegetation closely with the representation of the on the faces of the Georgian cross Edzani Sion cross pillar – that is, a pillars were bound with inherent stone-brick pillar topped by a cross. signiicance. Instead of simply acting Furthermore, Mirdat’s transforma- as secondary decoration, ornament tion of the living pillar into stone is allowed to occupy valuable surface would it with the dates listed for the space on the cross pillars in a way earliest surviving fragments of cross that brings it to the forefront of the pillars, as they populated Georgia overall composition, implying not an between the 5th and 8th centuries. idealization but an active invocation he stone pillars that survive from of the nature motif. this time vary in relief style, with a Most importantly, the noticeable change from primarily designs are used instead of the vast symbolic ornamentation of the 5th corpus of Christian iconography that century toward distinctly Christian the Georgian stone masons would igural relief beginning in the 6th cen- have had access to. What appears to tury – in what Machabelli calls “the be simple decoration may instead be irst signs of belief in the miraculous a purposeful decision to accentuate power of holy images'' that would the natural spatial geography of the eventually become a large part of the cross pillars, further establishing the Georgian Orthodoxy.18 Towards the open-air monuments as environmen- later 8th and 9th centuries, ornament tal entities. Some of the most explicit is almost entirely excluded. However, examples of vegetal imagery have it is notable that a signiicant number been preserved on the extant bases of early, more decorative stelae, were of non-surviving cross pillars. his later appropriated as spolia by local is most aptly demonstrated on the builders in order to fashion architec- Pantiani base from the 6th century, tural accents for their churches (igs. which depicts two angels on oppo- 2.1 – 2.5). site ends of a miniature intact cross If the cross pillar is meant to pillar, from which surrounding grape be a stone invocation of such sacred vines and lowers seem to grow (ig. objects as the Life-giving Pillar and 3).20 Another base from the 5th–6th the Revered Cross, then the resulting century Ukangori pillar demon-

18 Machabeli, “Early Medieval Stelae,” 92. 19 Jones, he Grammar of Ornament, 469. 20 Viticulture is a signiicant part of Georgian history. As one of the oldest wine Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 83 strates similar iconography, depict- a form of ornament that parallels ing a blooming tree with an ovine pagan Celtic designs and demands or caprine animal to its right (ig. further research (igs. 9.1, 9.2). With 4). In its original location, the stone the inclusion of spolia (as the orna- tree would have appeared to “sprout” mented parts of the cross pillar were from the real earth where the base most frequently appropriated), there would have been situated. is a clear association between natural On the larger fragments of imagery, vegetal ornament, and the cross pillars, this “growth” of plant cross pillar stelae. life is commonly depicted on the Although natural imagery adjacent and rear faces of the pillar. can hold signiicant symbolic mean- he Kataula pillar from the 7th cen- ing in Christian art, there is evidence tury dedicates an entire face on the that scenes on the cross pillars were rear side of the pillar to the design preigured by earlier, pagan interpre- of a climbing grape vine (ig. 6). On tations. Due to the scarcity of extant the 6th–7th century Natlismtsemeli pagan artifacts, attention will be Pillar, the two lateral sides – one of a focused on a series of pre-Christian climbing grape vine and the other of bronze belt buckles (igs. 10.1-10.3). a rhomboidal net (ig. 7.2)– are used Similar to the cross pillars, these to accentuate the primary compo- buckles were excavated across Geor- sitional narrative of the Hunting of gia, indicating they had a widespread Saint Eustace, presented on the face presence. Forged between the 1st of the pillar (igs. 7.1). Finally, the and 4th centuries, the belt buck- collection of 6th–7th century Didi les all have similar compositions: Gomareti cross pillars found together a highly stylized central igure of a is marked by two examples of this deer, horse, or ram, surrounded by a iconography (ig. 8.1): one has the collection of vines, birds, and dogs, ornament of a sprouting iris (ig. and bordered by a repeating pattern 8.2), while the other dedicates a side of ornament. he barking dogs, ap- of the pillar to a collection of vine- pearing in the top left of each buckle, scrolls (ig. 8.3). his brief summary indicate that the scenes are depict- of the clearest examples of nature-like ing a hunt. he birds present in two relief on the Georgian cross pillars of the buckles are reminiscent of only begins to address the amount peafowl or peahens, which suggests of ornament truly present on these a fascination with the bird that pre- monuments. Some cross pillars carry cedes the 6th-century Gantiadi and examples of Georgian knotwork, Bolnisi cross pillars (ig 9.1). Across regions in the world, evidence of wine production has been found as far back as the 6th millennium BC. he grape vine appears as a symbol of Georgian identity, as well as a manifestation of the Georgian landscape, where grape vines are found. 84 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

Figures 2.1 – 2.5 (top to bottom). Collection of examples of spolia, taken from K. Machabelli, Early Medieval Stone Crosses. Georgia. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 85

Figure 3. h e Pantiani base (6th- 7th ce.), Pantiani, Georgia.

Figure 4. h e Ukangori base (5th ce.), Ukang- ori, Georgia.

Figure 5. h e Ukangori capital (6th ce.), Ukangori, Georgia. 86 Stone Trees and Holy Forests all belt buckles, the central igure is indeed plays a signiicant role in marked by two unusual low-relief pre-Christian Georgian cosmology. coils on the fore and hindquarter of Symbolically, natural imagery could the animal. Most interestingly, these thus serve both a pagan and a Chris- coils also appear on the ruminant tian context, giving regional artists igures of the cross pillars, some few reasons to abandon the artistic three to four centuries later. his themes and visual vocabularies that phenomenon is most clearly repre- they already understood. Although a sented on the Ukangori base (ig. full analysis of pre-Christian Geor- 4), and the Ukangori capital, which gian art is outside the scope of this depicts a fragment of a resting deer paper, these few examples serve to or horse (ig. 5). he presence of a demonstrate that pagan motifs re- sitting deer on the Nagvarevi cross mained in-use after the Christianiza- can be more clearly deciphered due tion of Georgia, surviving despite the to the appearance of a circle on the area’s new, radically diferent material right of the weathered pillar (ig. 11). culture and belief system. hese sunken coils could be used to Evidently, there are two articulate the presence of muscula- notable efects produced by the ture, or possibly be a stylistic motif Georgian artists’ uses of natural im- commonly associated with ruminants agery on their cross pillars. First, they in early irst-millennium Georgia. indicate the existence of an impor- he presence of these symbols within tant tradition of visual culture that both metalwork and relief, despite precedes the fourth century Chris- the signiicant technical diference in tianization of Georgia. Second, and their conception, suggests a shared perhaps most critically, they work culture of visual motifs between to root the cross pillar in a distinctly Christian and pagan Georgia. Ad- natural sphere. If ornament, as Ahani ditionally, the importance of hunting et al. propose, might ofer insight compositions on the buckles is paral- into the intentions of an artist, then leled by the presence of Saint George there is no intention clearer than the and Saint Eustace across many of association between cross pillars and the cross pillars.21 As noted by Nina the lora and fauna of their surround- Iamanidze, the cult of the equestrian ing landscapes. Furthermore, as their saints lourished in early Christian placement alongside roads and in Georgia, perhaps acting as a substitu- ields indicates, stone cross pillars tion for “the veneration of ancient were meant to function in nature, heroes” from their pagan past.22 outside of domestic and ecclesiastical As I will later discuss, the hunt spaces. his choice of location might

21 See: Brdadzori, Khozhorni, Natlismtsemeli, and Dmanisi Sion cross pillars. 22 Iamanidze, “he Dragon-Slayer Horseman from its Origins to the Seljuks,” 98. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 87 have bridged the divide between the cult object – as when Saint Nino expanding Christian faith and exist- places her Revered Cross in the same ing nature religions, and would have spot – indicates a baptism, or adop- beneitted the cross pillars’ reception tion, of the role that paganism played as cult objects. in pre-Christian Georgian society. As a result, the importance Although brief, this description of of open-air placement in regard to pagan Georgian rituals evidences a cross pillars should not be deempha- relationship between open-air, natu- sized. Returning to he Conversion ral spaces and a religious tradition of K’art’li by Nino, it is clear that that preceded Nino’s conversion. the open-air, free standing motif To discuss pre-Christian is not only bound to the original religious systems, one must ac- miracle of the Life-giving Pillar and knowledge the inherent problems in the Revered Cross. he theme of doing so. Simply put, it is rare for a paganism in relation to Saint Nino’s Caucasian or Indo-European pagan miracles appears in both the Mroveli religion to survive for two thousand and Ruinus Chronicles. Speciically, years without evolution or interfer- in Mroveli’s account, Saint Nino ence – if not from Christianity, then reaches K’art’li and inds the people certainly from surrounding cultures. there worshipping “ire, stones, and his is especially true for the Cau- wood as god.”23 he people, not yet casus, a highly contested region that converted, worship “idols,” notably, has always acted as a melting pot of a bronze statue of a man, with jewels diferent religions and folk beliefs. As for eyes and golden armor.24 he a result, modern understandings of pagan gods, one named Armazi and Georgian mythology are patchwork, another Zaden, share names with the composed of historical accounts from mountains at Mtskheta, where they foreign travelers and contemporary are said to have been placed before interviews with religious groups Saint Nino’s miracle toppled them; whose folk beliefs survived in isola- speciically, it was “on that moun- tion from living deep in the mountain [that] formerly idols had been tains.26 hough historical accounts erected.”25 he narrative choice to can be problematic – often due to replace those idols with a Christian the Christian, “civilized” lens of the

23 Mroveli, “Conversion of K’art’li by Nino,” 97. 24 Ibid, 98. 25 Ibid, 373. 26 To quote Georges Charachidzé: “he mountain Georgians … preserved a rich and well-organized religious system to the beginning of the twentieth century, with diferentiated cults that continued to be productive [due to the persistence of] a priestly class with an orally-transmitted body of knowledge.” In Religions and Myths of the Georgians of the Mountains. 88 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

Figure 6. Sketch depiction of each side of the Kataula pillar (7th ce.), Kataula, Georgia. Taken from K. Machabelli, Early Medieval Georgian Stone Crosses.

Figure 7.1 (above right). Front face of the Natlismtsemeli pillar (6th-7th ce.), Natlismt- semeli, Georgia.

Figure 7.2 (above left). Sketch depiction of each side of Natlismtsemeli pillar (6th-7th ce.), pillar. Taken from K. Machabelli, Early Medieval Georgian Stone Crosses.

Figure 8.1 (left). Didi Goma- reti pillars together (6th-7th ce.), Didi Gomareti, Georgia. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 89

Figure 8.2. Didi Gomareti pillar with image of an iris.

Figure 8.3. Didi Gomareti pillar with the image of vine scrolls.

Figure 9.1. Example of Georgian knotwork be- neath a peacock on the Bolnisi pillar (6th-7th ce.), Bolnisi, Georgia.

Figure 9.2. Fragment of King Doniert’s Stone (9th ce.), East Cornwall, England. 90 Stone Trees and Holy Forests visiting author – they ofer valu- and an underworld, the home of able insight into local belief systems monsters. hese layers were connect- that still functioned up until Soviet ed by an axis mundi that is usually forces entered the region in the 20th identiied as a World Tree, or Tree of century. Life; it is in some versions a tower, As it was often the moun- chain, or pillar.27 he World Tree as tains that saved pieces of these faiths, interchangeable with a pillar could it was also the mountains that had a be one explanation for the unique hand in creating them. Perhaps due narrative presented by the miracle of to being a region with some of the the Life-giving Pillar, suggesting that most varied and dramatic geological it and thus later cross pillars, might features in the world, Georgian – and have had roots in a pre-Christian simultaneously Caucasian – mythol- cosmological belief. However, the ogy is embedded with a distinct appearance of a world tree is hardly natural quality. According to the unique to Georgian paganism.28 A separate research of Alexander Mika- more favorable argument is presented beridze and Georges Charachidzé, when one inspects the nature cults Georgian paganism was comprised of formed by its followers. a shamanistic, polytheistic belief sys- he abundance of wild spac- tem, characterized by oral tradition, es in the Caucasus is clearly relected nature divinities, and ritual sacriice. in the myths and legends of the Followers believed the universe was region. Speciic deities are consid- divided into three vertical layers – ered the patrons of each realm in the the “middle world,” or earth; the natural sphere – the gods Mindort- highest world, the home of the gods; batoni and Ochopintre, who rule the

However, even in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus, local beliefs have seen at least partial dilution by Christian missionary and trans-regional inluence. hese beliefs are usually syncretic. For example, Saint George, the Christian patron saint of Georgia, is often conlated as a deity in these pagan communities. For the Ossetians, he is one of the most worshipped divine igures, “Uastyrdzhi,” patron of men and travelers. Alternatively, Saint Elijah is called “Uatsilla,” god of rain. In the northern region of Pkhovi, Saint George is called Giorgi, and is associated closely with ancient local war and storm gods. See: Richard Foltz, “Scythian Neo-Paganism in the Cauca- sus: he Ossetian Uatsdiin as a ‘Nature Religion’ in Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 321; Kevin Tuite, “Lightening, Sacriice, and Possession in the Traditional Religions of the Caucasus” in Anthropos, 487. 27 Historical Dictionary of Georgia, ed. Alexander Mikaberidze, 1st ed. (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2007), s.v. “Cosmology,” 242-243. 28 John Colarusso, Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Cir- cassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs, 102; M. Berman et al., Georgia hrough Earth, Fire, Air and Water, 45. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 91 domains of fruitful lands and wild prayed on the Christian God to save forests, respectively, demand that him. It was after this moment that those who use their spaces ask per- King Mirian decided to convert and mission.29 As a result of this depen- later made Christianity the oicial dence on nature, a signiicant part of religion of the kingdom. Similar to the religion is based on a specialized the narrative of Saint Nino toppling pantheon of the hunt, which Chara- the pagan idols and replacing them chidzé takes care to document from with her Revered Cross, we see here its surviving followers in Svaneti. Of an adaptation of former polytheistic the most important of these deities beliefs in favor of the new Chris- is Dali, a female goddess of nature, tian faith. Before the conversion, animals, and the hunt. Along with Ochopintre and Dali were consid- many of the igures in the legends, ered the masters of the wild; As a she lives deep in the mountains and result, the fate of persons entering rules the forest and its creatures. the forest were believed to be under Her cult was particularly widespread their jurisdiction.31 For King Marian, throughout the mountainous regions a follower of the Georgian pantheon, of Georgia. to acknowledge the eminence of he signiicance of Dali God over the Georgian forests is an and Ochopintre’s domains within important example of Christianity Georgian mythology is of particu- functionally appropriating the core lar interest when compared to the of the local mythology. conversion story of King Mirian.30 Although the conversion According to Ruinus, King Mirian’s of K’art’li has diluted the lowland wife urged him to convert to Chris- pre-Christian religions or converted tianity, but he rejected her for some them altogether, certain regions still time. One day, the king went on a ofer insight through select groups hunt in the woods and was separated of surviving pagan worshippers. One from his companions, and suddenly such region is Pshavi, where mul- the forest turned pitch black. After tiple local groups still practice ritual wandering in the darkness, he began animal sacriice and shrine worship. to call on the diferent gods, and It is in this area that one village wor- the darkness only parted when he ships their patron deity in a sacred

29 Historical Dictionary of Georgia, ed. Alexander Mikaberidze, 1st ed. (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2007), s.v. “Ochopintre,” 242-243. 30 Ruinus of Aquileia, History of the Church, 398; Mroveli, “Conversion of K’art’li by Nino,” 119-121. 31 Historical Dictionary of Georgia, ed. Alexander Mikaberidze, 1st ed. (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2007), s.v. “Ochopintre,” 243. 92 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

Figure 10.1 (left). Bronze belt buckle of a stag (1st-2nd ce.)

Figure 10.2 (middle left). Bronze belt buckle of a ram (3rd-4th ce.), Imereti, Geor- gia. (3rd-4th ce.), Imereti, Georgia.

Figure 10.3 (bottom left). Bronze belt buckle of a stag (3rd-4th ce.), Racha, Georgia.

Figure 11 (above). Resting deer, detail of the Nagvarevi cross (6th ce.), Nagvarevi, Georgia. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 93 oak grove.32 Only ifty miles north the Vainakh, as it was through these of Mtskheta, the village’s proxim- peoples that Georgian beliefs were ity to where the Life-giving Pillar adapted, assimilated, and perpetu- miracle was performed suggests that ated.34 What all these religions have Mtskheta may have once engaged in common, along with almost all in similar rituals before the arrival Caucasian belief systems, is a de- of Saint Nino. In another ethnic pendence on the natural realm: a region of the Georgian Caucasus, the sentiment that commonly seems to Ossetians follow a form of neopagan- manifest itself through the worship ism that, like Georgian mythology, of sacred trees. strongly associates its deities with he existence of tree cults natural phenomena. As a result, wor- in the Caucasus has been partially ship and prayer is performed outside, cataloged by German scholar Carl and Ossetians gather at hand-built von Hahn, whose 1891 article cata- shrines created in the image of their logs historical – as well as personal – natural surroundings.33 Although experiences with tree worship in the these pre-Christian faiths have Caucasus.35 Hahn begins his work survived long enough to advocate for with an overview of past documents nature-worship in the region, only that airm the existence of tree wor- so much knowledge of Georgian ship in the region. Perhaps the oldest mythology can be garnered from the literary mention of a Georgian tree folk Christianity that largely exists in cult can be found in Apollonius Rho- the lowlands. dius’ 3rd century BC epic, the tale In turn, it is prudent to of Jason and the Argonauts. In the look to the highlands, pre-Soviet story, the Golden Fleece is located in intrusion, in order to more fully the region of Colchis – an exonym understand what Emma Leeming for the land where Georgia meets calls “the ancient currents of faith the Black Sea – hung from a tree practices” – speciically within groups in a sacred grove of Ares.36 Shortly like the Ossetians, Circassians, and after, Hahn quotes Byzantine scholar

32 William Dunbar, “Beer and Blood Sacriices: Meet the Caucasus Pagans Who Worship Ancient Deities.” 33 Richard Foltz, “Scythian Neo-Paganism in the Caucasus: he Ossetian Uatsdiin as a ‘Nature Religion,’” 326. 34 Emma L. Leeming, “he Unknown Factors: Evidence from the Cave Monaster- ies and the Signiicance of Georgian Vernacular Religion as a Relic of Earlier Ritual Practices,” 180. 35 Hahn, “Heilige Haine und Bäume bei den Völkern des Kaukasus,” 811. 36 As observed in Hahn, Dunbar, Foltz, and Tuite, suspending or hanging items from trees and tree branches (i.e. weapons, armor, candles, remnants of cloth, and coins) was a cultic function of 94 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

Procopius, who in the 6th century might fashion crosses from the wood remarked on the “barbara simplici- of the sacred pillar. In her book, he tate arbo – res in Deorum colentes Sacred Tree, Carole Cusack notes numero.”37 From travel descriptions that nature worshippers would use of journeys to the Circassians, Svans, the wood of sacred trees to produce Ossetians, and Abkhazians, Hahn “ritual objects, including statues, formulates an argument for a cult in amulets, and various receptacles.”40 which trees are venerated and sacred his activity certainly invokes the groves are used as worship and sacri- same ritualistic energy of Hahn’s ice sites to local pantheons. tree worshippers, as well as that of In one deinitive example Georgia’s early Christians. Clearly, of tree worship, Hahn references a the parallels between pagan and scholar who tells of a sacred tree in Christian worship practices are not a river valley that was said to cure insigniicant. sickness.38 According to the source’s For the purposes of this account, the ill traveled from both paper, attention should be directed near and far to bring oferings to the to a passage in which Hahn briely tree; before departure, the pilgrims describes how Christian missionaries would take a piece of the tree’s wood interacted with pagan grove worship: and wrap it with a shred of fabric. hat fabric and wood would then Als das Christentum sich … bei be hung from their neck, while the den tscherkessischen Stämmen excess would be ofered to the tree Eingang verschafte, waren die as sacriice and tied to its branches.39 Missionare klug genug, nicht his interaction indicates that trees auf einmal schrof vorzugehen did not only function as pagan altar und die heidnischen Hei- spaces or conduits for the gods, but ligtümer zu zerstören, sondern that they could function as sacred sie stellten das Kreuz … in objects independently. Here, one jenen Hainen auf. So gewöhnte might recall the story of the Life- sich das Volk allmählich daran, giving Pillar, where Mroveli describes an den Stellen, wo es früher how the people of K’art’li went on seine Opfer dargebracht und pilgrimages to Mtskheta, so they zu seinen heidnischen Göt- sacred trees and could act as a form of ritual sacriice “to” the tree. 37 he “barbarian simplicity of the tree – the number [of which] honoring the Gods.” 38 Hahn, “Heilige Haine und Bäume," 811. 39 Ibid, 811. 40 Pamela R. Frese and S.J.M Gray, “Trees”, Vol. 15, 26. Cited in Cusack, he Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations, 8-9. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 95

tern gebetet hatte, das Kreuze porated the former belief systems of anzubeten. the lowland region, but those former Der Bau von Kirchen mochte pagan beliefs also had an efect on … als überlüssig erscheinen, how locals perceived Christianity. da man gewohnt war, den As Hahn’s quoted passage demon- natürlichen grünen Dom des strates, the placement of the cross Waldes mit seinem geheimnis- inside sacred groves did conform the vollen Dunkel als Heiligtum local tribes to the Christian faith, zu betrachten. Das ist den but it also rid them of any interest auch der Grund, warum wir in churches. As a result, local nature- im Lande der Tscherkessen worship was conlated with the new aufallend wenig Überreste monotheistic religion, forming a christlicher Tempel vorinden, hybrid, folk Christianity that has sur- obgleich sie notorisch viele vived to this day. Jahrhunderte lang Christen his syncretism is critical waren.41 when considering the possible functions of cross pillars in early medieval his section of Hahn’s article is strik- Georgia. As previously mentioned, ingly reminiscent of the conversions the open-air cross pillars were located of K’art’li and King Mirian. Rather in nature, outside of urban spaces; than destroying these holy spaces leading Giorgi N. Chubinashvili to – the sacred groves, the forests, or theorize that they may have func- the places where idols stood – early tioned as substitutes for churches.42 Christianity efectively adopted his is additionally supported by the them, turning once-pagan spaces prevalence of vegetal ornament in into deinitively Christian ones. early stelae, which roots the pillars However, this adoption goes both in a pastoral context. I would like to ways. Christianity may have incor- propose that, not unlike the place-

41 As Christianity … entered the Circassian tribes, the missionaries were wise enough to not suddenly act harshly and destroy the pagan sanctuaries, but to place the cross … in those groves. So, the people gradually got used to worshipping the cross in the places where they had once made their sacriices and prayed to their pagan gods.

he building of churches might have seemed superluous … since the people were accustomed to regard the natural green cathedral of the forest with its mysterious darkness as a sanctuary. hat is the reason why we ind strikingly few remains of Christian temples in the land of the Circassians, although they were noto- riously Christians for many centuries. Cited in Hahn, 811. 42 G. N. Chubinashvili, Khandisi, Tb., 1978, 9, cited in Tamar Dadiani et al., Medieval Georgian Sculpture, 45. 96 Stone Trees and Holy Forests ment of crosses in sacred groves, the as a conversion tool. Not unlike cross pillars may have represented a missionaries setting up crosses in Christianized, stone relection of the the sacred Circassian groves, the region’s sacred trees. nature-based, tree-like quality of the While it is unlikely that this cross pillars as axis mundi could have representation was a direct invoca- made them identiiable by the pagan tion of pagan ideologies, it is entirely populations as venerable monu- possible that the early creators of ments. hough the local populations these monuments were relying on associated living trees with divinity, traditions and visual cultures rooted the fact that the cross pillars were in pre-Christian belief: a visual stone and not wood would have been vocabulary they associated with the inconsequential. After all, as Mircea divine. Certainly, the cross pillars Eliade argued, “the sacred tree, the were wholly Christian monuments in sacred stone are not adored as stone function. However, their association or tree; they are worshiped because with nature, and possible cultic func- they are hierophanies,” or manifestations as stand-ins for prayer sites, tions of the sacred.43 In other words, match closely with Hahn’s syncretic the materials used in the invocation description of Circassians worship- of a sacred object were irrelevant; a ping the Christian God in the “green sacred tree is not sacred because it is cathedral” of nature. hough the irst a tree – nor does it cease being a tree cross pillars likely started as wood because it is sacred – instead, that structures – much like the Life-giv- tree derives its sanctity from how its ing Pillar – their eventual conversion worshippers allow that sacred quality to stone would have paralleled the to be revealed. Since it is the wor- trend in stelae from ornamental to shipper who deeply desires the sacred igural. As local masons assimilated to exist, that sacred quality can themselves further into the visual manifest in whatever has come to be languages of Christian art, the low- identiied with a supernatural reality. ering ornament of early cross pillars For the pagan, the spiritual efect of became secondary to igural com- approaching the holy tree and that positions, a change that would have of approaching the holy pillar would certainly relected a weakening of the have been indistinguishable. Far relationship between Christian belief away from churches and cities, both and pagan tradition. the tree and pillar existed under the In addition to possibly natural cathedral of the sky, of the relying on pagan visual cultures, stars, and of the forests. the replacement of sacred trees with Although the cosmology cross pillars could have functioned may have changed, the omnipresence

43 Mircea Eliade, he Sacred and the Profane: he Nature of Religion, 12. Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History 97 of the divine remained the same, and ing liberation from Arab rule, sug- the faith to believe in it did not wa- gests that cross stelae are not merely ver. It may have helped that the pillar limited to the northern region, but is a logical abstraction of the tree, but instead span the entire Caucasus. the ritualism of worship – whether his possible parallel, as well as that praying to an oak covered in grape of the Celtic High Crosses, certainly vines, or to a stone cross inscribed encourages future research in the with them – is inherent. As the cre- subject of pagan inluence on Chris- ators of the cross pillars were using tian monumental art. their former, pagan, vocabularies to Ultimately, it is because understand a new faith, it is reason- these conversion tactics were suc- able that those vocabularies would cessful that tracing the origins of have resonated with locals who the cross pillar is a diicult task. identiied them with the sacred, and Only through folk beliefs, artistic who were yet to convert. While the traditions, and hotspots of surviv- prevalence of cross pillars would fade ing paganism is it possible to link by the ninth century, their growing the creation of the cross pillars to popularity as cult objects beginning pre-Christian inspiration. However, in the ifth century complements the argument that can be fashioned the increasing conversion of K’art’li’s regardless of fragmented theologies population to Christianity. reveals a picture of faith founded he cross pillars of Georgia on tradition in the early medieval may be a distinctly Christian arti- Caucasus. hough the introduction fact in legacy, but it is their origins of Christianity would fundamentally that remain most mysterious and change the people of K’art’li, it is fascinating. heir unusual composi- clear that paganism has lived on in tion – that of a pillar topped by a their sacred sites, their art, and in cross – is reason enough to doubt their mountains. they have a fully-Christian origin, as it is a construction that would not be seen elsewhere until the advent of the calvary cross in 15th century France. he understood importance of trees in Georgian cosmology and Cauca- sian religions is a strong explanation for the creation of the cross pillars, which were richly associated with nature and organic iconography. Furthermore, their possible parallels in the Armenian Khachkar, which appeared in the 9th century follow- 98 Stone Trees and Holy Forests

Calista Blanchard is a student at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Class of 2021, where she will major in Medieval Studies, and minor in Art History and French. Bibliography

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