Description
Medium: Stone ware clay, multiple glazes, platinum luster & acrylic
Size: about life sized & wall mounted
There have been so very many mass human injustices throughout the ages of which the Black experience is one. In reading Ronald Seagal’s book ‘the black Diaspora’ wherein he tells the story of African descended people existing outside Africa. He describes the collective experience spanning over five centuries of slave trades participated in by many nations. He tells the story without a trace of sensationalism thus allowing the dark potency of the events center stage. He takes us, via his prose, as if being a passenger through the course of the struggle against Colonial rule and racial oppressions; he shows the continuing plight of peoples confined by the consequences of past prejudices to the still present ones.
To me the most important, all though poignant description, are the wondrous benefits and achievements we have collectively gained from the Diaspora of an oppressed, persecuted and at times despised people. This influence has enriched us immeasurable in world culture, in music, in language and literature, painting, sculpture and architecture let alone the culinary influences. Most of all it has shown us once again how the human spirit, in its love and demand of freedom is equipped to absorb the darkest immoralities and turn them in to triumph of light.
Let us not fall in to a slumber of complacency- much more needs to be achieved to stamp out the prejudices still very present in all of us, Black and White.
I was so much taken with Segal’s approach that I felt compelled to portray the experience in a face sculpture, showing the pain and suffering as well as the unbelievable strength it took to accomplish the collective survival and moral triumph of the Black people.
