In the past I struggled to pin point what the motive for my art work was. When I completed a work I wasn’t fond of, it only seem to exacerbate this issue. I have come to realize that my work has a common theme.
In university the class was assigned to write a paper, I struggled to find a topic. With only a short time left to write I visited the Art History teacher who assigned the task. She was able to finess it out of me. My topic would be, Identity.
Women, women of colour, aboriginal people, my people. I hadn’t realized I had this crisis. I began to study all these and more. So many artists, their work and writings so inspiring to me. Mixed Blessings, New Art in a Multicutural America, by Lucy R Lippard, has a wonderful range of artists with similar subjects/issues to my own. And here I am, so many years later, these thoughts, these subjects, this identity crisis, still staring me in the face.
Recently I recalled a time, when at my family home, my relatives, my aunts and uncles tried to force my family into giving them our house. And another time when an ex-boyfriend had stolen some items from our house. I eventually ended up being interviewed by a police officer as this boyfriend would not go away. He asked me something that hadn’t even occurred to me. Why didn’t you call the police? I struggled to answer, I, I don’t know…. I guess we always just handle things on our own…
I’ve never distrusted the police, I’ve never had any run ins with the law or been in any trouble. Yet, it is ingrained so far in me that we won’t get any help and we should handle it ourselves, that when I have someone stealing from me, or relatives trying to forcefully take my home, I don’t call the cops. I round up my family and we handle it together!
Now, in hindsight, maybe we could have handled things differently. For the better? I don’t know. Being aboriginal, I am not short on stories about why any one of my relatives shouldn’t call the cops. They aren’t all good… but they aren’t all bad either.
My grandfather died before I was born, in no small part, because of at least three white policeman. Although I won’t recount the story right now, it has always stuck with me. The personal apologies my mother has gotten from these men and the nightmares they claim to have, do not soften the blow for me. A different life that might have been had he been allowed to live. Instead, I grew up for the most part, without any grandparents.
I see my mother now, struggling more than ever with so many issues from her past and I realize that many of these issues have been handed down to me. I frantically try to work it all out, through artwork, so It will stop here. With me.
FYI- I acquired an excellent grade on the paper I wrote, even with the horrendous punctuation.
Kalaya Point 