May You Live in Interesting Times

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Figure 1.

High-Sis in the Garden of Heathen, 2017; mixed media on fabric, various dimensions.

Figure 2.

Dem ova Deh Suh, wih ova Yah Suh, 2016; mixed media on fabric, 81.5 × 50 in.

Figure 3.

Pimper's Paradise, the Terra Nova Nights Edition, 2018; triptych, mixed media on canvas, 7 ft. 5 in. × 16 ft. 8 in.

Figure 4.

George Steibel, 2018; oil on canvas, 83 × 52 in.

Figure 5.

Yes We Have Met Before, 2017; triptych, mixed media on canvas, 96 × 144 in.

I was a final-year student at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston, in 2003, when one of the most troubling incidents in Jamaica's recent history separated our opinions on our nation's spiraling crime rate. Seven young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty were killed in a police/military raid in my hometown. The entire country was divided by this act of cruelty. Reports were that their bodies were in positions of what forensics experts called "an execution" killing. The pathological reports filled our newspapers, and every detail was covered in our nightly news.

At the time, I felt I had a great grasp on things. I was sure that the officers were the criminals, and because of the victims' ages, they were of course innocent. So, with my understanding of the information, I decided I was going to produce a painting that presented to the public this unimaginable atrocity. I was going to visually query our judicial system.

I began my project by collecting information about the ongoing discussions that saturated our public. The newspapers published anatomical diagrams that indicated where each individual was shot. There was so much information, the public became a secondary jury. This created even more tension and national solidarity when the actual jury gave an acquittal.

I decided my painting would be the final project I would exhibit for my undergraduate show. I started with a horizontal panel, and, in the manner of Andreas Vesalius, I wanted to display these "undead" cadavers. Goya's The Third of May, 1808 (1814) and Manet's The Execution of Maximillian (1867) became launching pads for the image. I was essentially making a metapainting from a theoretical perspective of painting rather than illustrating the models onto a surface. After months of building and then destroying the image, the painting emerged.

I went to visit the house where the crime occurred. It's a chilling feeling to enter a place of death. One could still see the bullet holes in the walls and on the floors, a reminder of the lives lost. Strangely, the folks who lived in the vicinity seemed ambivalent; it was as if the military had done them a favor. The folks who knew some of these young men best were somehow not caught up in the same kind of public hysteria. In fact, they had a different conclusion from the rest of us. As I spoke to people who were "terrorized" by this "gang," I became unsure, and I saw my very ethical pride dwindle with the same certainty with which it had been created. Best yet, I saw a painting constructed on all-too-quick judgments and ill-conceived solidarity. I went back to my studio and reconstructed "from scratch." Immanuel Kant suggested that the French Revolution affected the "onlookers" very differently than it did the people of France. Just as I had already done many times before, I destroyed the surface and started again. In the end, I developed a large triptych. The winged panels have onlookers looking in at the central figures as well as looking away from these figures. The final piece, The Breaton Seven, became my very first undertaking of painting.