Kanza of Kwango - Arturo Lindsay (NEW)
Kanza of Kwango, Arturo Lindsay

Kanza of Kwango

Medium

Offset Lithograph

Date

2001

Dimensions

22 x 15 inches

Edition Size

80 prints in this edition

Printer

Robert "Bob" Franklin

Provenance

Brandywine Workshop and Archives

Location

Philadelphia, PA

About the Work

From the Artist

To see is to know. But how can we know the unseen—the histories, the stories, or the names of a people that were undocumented or erased? I asked myself that question late one evening as I looked at the sun setting behind the hills on the Bay of Portobelo on the Caribbean coast of Panama.  The view from my studio faces the ruins of a dock that was, at one time, the first encounter with Tierra Firme for many weary, shackled, and enslaved black feet whose journeys began months earlier in Africa.

The setting sun in Portobelo reflects off the cerulean blue sky and puffy white clouds onto the still waters of the bay producing a rather unique effect of light that seemingly glows from beneath the surface of the water. I wondered that evening…could this light be the souls of those that perished at sea?

The following morning, I began imagining and imaging the anonymous faces of the children that did not arrive in Portobelo on those slavers—Los Desaparecidos. My drawing session attracted neighborhood children who began to guess which of their friends were represented in my drawings. Their guessing game made me realize that my drawings were probably not that anonymous after all. Maybe, my drawings were informed by the faces of the children I saw every day in my neighborhood. Moreover, maybe the faces in my drawings bore phenotypic resemblances to the abducted children that perished at sea. So began my journey.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archive records

The Children of Middle Passage Series was created to memorialize the countless children and young people that perished during the Middle Passage of the trans-Atlantic slave trade whose names and identities have been erased.  In order to erase the anonymity to which these children were relegated I titled each portrait with a traditional African name and a corresponding village. It is very possible that, for example, a young girl by the name of Ye was kidnapped from the Ashanti village of Ejisu and later perished on a slaver crossing the Atlantic.

It is my hope and belief that when we commemorate spirit beings that met tragic ends in works of art we provide that spirit a peaceful and loving resting place. The Children of Middle Passage Series is such a body of work.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archive records

During a residency at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, the Afro-Panamanian artist Arturo Lindsay developed an offset lithography series titled Children of Middle Passage that honors the ancestors by memorializing the countless children who perished aboard slave ships crossing the Atlantic. Each of the ten prints in the suite depicts an angelic-faced African child whose silhouetted body emerges from the bowels of a diagrammed ship or an instrument of restraint. Each child's face is illuminated by a halo reminiscent of Byzantine icons. Lindsay invites viewers to venerate these children by placing them within the shape of a niche altar. In contrast to his colorful installations and paintings, which often reference the vibrant landscapes of his native Panama or the Caribbean seascapes of his hometown, the port city of Colón, Lindsay limited his palette to a monochromatic black—the color that early-modern Europe associated with darkness, death, and the devil—but to which he attributes with a sense of beauty. To undo the epistemic violence of anonymity that rendered these youth casualties of history, Lindsay titled each portrait with a traditional African name and a corresponding village. Ile of Ile Ife, for example, hails from the holy city that the Yoruba considered the birthplace of humankind. The artist infused an Afro-diasporic worldview to the print series by adding symbols of Santería, and despite their minimalist palette, each of these divine spirits vibrates with the power of ashé. Art historian David H. Brown argues that objects do not need to be consecrated to manifest ashé as long as they possess certain ethno-aesthetic criteria such as projecting moral principles and inspiring a devotional disposition. The Children of Middle Passage also led to a collaboration with poet Opal Moore when they researched the story of a ship that had left the West Coast of Africa with captives and disembarked in Rio de Janeiro in 1832. Moore and Lindsay reimagined the loss and mourning through a collaborative performance with students from Spelman College titled The Voyage of the Delfina (2002).
—Excerpted and adapted from Tatiana Reinoza's essay in the exhibition catalog All My Ancestors: The Spiritual in Afro-Latinx Art (2022); https://brandywineworkshopandarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/All-my-ancestors-exhibition-brochure-final5-1.pdf, accessed 8-30-2022

About the Artist

Arturo Lindsay

Dr. Arturo Lindsay is an artist, scholar, and educator whose work is informed by the research he conducts on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in America. His findings are manifested in works of art, essays, and lectures. A native of C...

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