拍品專文
Kerry James Marshall pictures use a unique adaptation of the narrative tradition to condense some aspect of the African American experience. As an artist raised in Birmingham, Alabama and later raised in Watts, his own life has taken place on the turbulent axes of black history in the States; in his artworks, Marshall commemorates this mixed and often troubled legacy through story and history, through the translation of personal experience.
In Terra Incognita, a waiter is seen mysteriously floating on the sea, an ocean liner in the background. Coordinates around the edge give the impression that this is some form of psychological map, which contrasts with the 'ye olde'-style map of Africa at the bottom right; likewise, the implied objectivity and precision of cartography is off-set by the painterly surface and the deliberately schematic depiction of the fishes. The collage-like composition of Terra Incognita, which harks back to Marshall's fascination in his school days with his teacher's scrapbook, here allows the artist to map out some shard of the African American experience. There is a shift in perspective through the 'progress' of time: the waiter stands, detached from his continent of origin, culturally ship-wrecked in his new, imposed guise. Crucially, despite his own lowly position in the social hierarchy of the West that has abducted him and his people, historically forcing Africans across the ocean in slave ships, Marshall grants this waiter a halo, marking him out as a saint, a perhaps unknowing martyr to the cruel whims of history who glows with inner nobility. This halo also reminds the crown this waiter used to wear as a king, which he was before becoming a slave.
The 'terra incognita' is itself one filled with mystery. In the maps in days of old such as the one shown in the bottom right of this picture, this was a phrase for all that was not known. In Marshall's map-within-a-map, a European galleon is shown dominating the seas while a giant, noble African king occupies the land in a style echoing antique maps of the 'terra incognita' type. The ocean acts as stage and backdrop to the crisscrossings that the waiter and his ancestors have been forced to make. Here, the waiter's posture is a near-parody of that original warrior's bearing, an echo of a grand past brought fleetingly to light in the more prosaic modern age in which we live, allowing Marshall to navigate a complex aspect of African American identity.
In Terra Incognita, a waiter is seen mysteriously floating on the sea, an ocean liner in the background. Coordinates around the edge give the impression that this is some form of psychological map, which contrasts with the 'ye olde'-style map of Africa at the bottom right; likewise, the implied objectivity and precision of cartography is off-set by the painterly surface and the deliberately schematic depiction of the fishes. The collage-like composition of Terra Incognita, which harks back to Marshall's fascination in his school days with his teacher's scrapbook, here allows the artist to map out some shard of the African American experience. There is a shift in perspective through the 'progress' of time: the waiter stands, detached from his continent of origin, culturally ship-wrecked in his new, imposed guise. Crucially, despite his own lowly position in the social hierarchy of the West that has abducted him and his people, historically forcing Africans across the ocean in slave ships, Marshall grants this waiter a halo, marking him out as a saint, a perhaps unknowing martyr to the cruel whims of history who glows with inner nobility. This halo also reminds the crown this waiter used to wear as a king, which he was before becoming a slave.
The 'terra incognita' is itself one filled with mystery. In the maps in days of old such as the one shown in the bottom right of this picture, this was a phrase for all that was not known. In Marshall's map-within-a-map, a European galleon is shown dominating the seas while a giant, noble African king occupies the land in a style echoing antique maps of the 'terra incognita' type. The ocean acts as stage and backdrop to the crisscrossings that the waiter and his ancestors have been forced to make. Here, the waiter's posture is a near-parody of that original warrior's bearing, an echo of a grand past brought fleetingly to light in the more prosaic modern age in which we live, allowing Marshall to navigate a complex aspect of African American identity.