We live in a colorful world. But what do you do see when color is not an option? The answer is black. The color black has always been a symbol of power, dignity, and elegance. Black can be found anywhere and everywhere. And it’s like the Holy Grail for artists.
True black and true white are rare. Nothing can be pure white or pure black, except unfiltered sunlight or the depths of a black hole.
These “black thoughts” are prompted by my acceptance of columnist Allen Woods “encouragement” in last Saturday’s Recorder to see an astounding exhibition of paintings by Dr. Imo NseImeh (ima-say-emay) at the Pulp Gallery in Holyoke. I followed his recommendation and drove down to 80 Race St. in Holyoke the very next day.
I’m glad I did. I’m still feeling the impact of Imeh’s extraordinary exhibit of large-scale, black on white drawings that is now embedded in my being.
Imeh’s mission is to show us “America’s recent history of White Rage manifesting itself into the hunting down, torturing, maiming, and lynching of Black people, for the preservation of White culture, their station, their power — and in the mighty name of “Jesus.” He is visualizing an “historical dive into the intersections of race, religion, and American identity, from the perspective of a Black Christian man.”
His current work is one more response to the Jan. 6 effort to overturn the legitimate election of Joe Biden. Imeh writes that this terroristic event “serves mainly as a point of departure for his considerations of other related moments of violence, hatred, and abuse by White people throughout American history, who have veiled their destructive desires behind their self-made image of ‘Christ.’”
One painting that really nailed me is a 7-foot square white canvas entitled “communion,” rendered in charcoal, India Ink, and Conte Crayon. “Partaking in communion is perhaps one of the most solemn activities in a Christian worship service,” Imeh says. “As a collective, the congregants gather and consume symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood, in a performance of suffering and dying with him. Communion also strengthens the bond between those who partake together.”
In this work the communion scene shows that “bond” among those who assaulted the Capitol a year ago Jan. 6. Imeh writes that “those who gathered there represented a host of differing ideologies — “Christian ideals,” political conservatism, nationalism, White nationalism, White supremacy, antisemitism, racism, and a host of conspiracy theories, including but not limited to QAnon. Pastors from prominent mega-churches and clergy from Catholic churches,” Imeh continues, “joined arms with leaders of known hate groups such as the Proud Boys and the Ku Klux Klan — and together they all looked the same, sounded the same, and behaved in the same manner. On that day, together, they partook of a strange communion as they stood in agreement with each other around the forceful acquisition of raw and unchecked power over others, at whatever cost.”
That’s what I experienced in this drawing. Communion congregants in the guise of Jesus who, Imeh shows us, by revealing “the worn tattered disguises (that) fall away from their faces, revealing the angry humanity beneath.” Inside a colonnade in the Capitol’s exterior, Imeh has drawn the ghostly forms of the Black slaves who were forced to build the original Capitol building. He ends his description by writing “In this work, the Black builders of the past are active witnesses to the events that unfolded on January 6th.”
Imeh’s Pulp Gallery exhibition is but one kind of real history that right-wing censorship is working so diligently to squelch at the state and local school board levels. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, notes that conservative censorship efforts have ramped up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, 2021, the Library Association recorded 330 challenges to particular books, up from 376 in 2019.
The fact is that over the past few years a loose, but growing alliance of religious fundamentalists, conservative politicians, and neoconservative cultural critics have assailed the cultural expressions of many disenfranchised groups. Conservative extremists are working to stop the teaching of real history and Critical Race Theory, stop teaching children “victimhood” and stop the encouragement of inclusiveness.
Caldwell-Stone sees this escalation as a way for conservatives to try to control, and limit, what students learn. “The attempt is based on the myth that the U.S. is a monocultural society.”
No civilized communion with the “other.”
“Connecting the Dots” appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. John Bos is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times. He is the editor of a new children’s book entitled “After the Race” that calls for teamwork with the “other.” Available on Amazon. Questions and comments are welcomed at john01370@gmail.com.