The
Barbados Advocate carries an article on a film by Alberta Whittle, inspired by Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.
This film is completely new to us, but
thankfully we now know a little more about it:
“Stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonised people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history”. Edward Said.
Alberta Whittle's work wants to disrupt the master narrative of the West, which traffics in myths and stereotypes of racial “Otherness”. The examination of the mystical ideologies linked to hysteria, ritual and intellectual colonisation will be fundamental in the creation of a subversive anthropological account of a fictional mythology. Alberta plans on infiltrating the domains in which they thrive: literature, official histories and ethnographies through the production of drawings, video and installation.
The film 'Fiat Lux' is informed by the 20th Century writer Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, this novel tells of the descent into perceived madness by Mr Rochester's colonial first wife Bertha who is renamed Antoinette by Rhys. Alberta's interests lie within the pageantry and symbols that we inherent and use to define our personal identity. The film includes footage shot in Barbados (Whittle's childhood home) of a spiritual baptism ritual derived from the Ethiopian high church, along with Antionette/ Bertha who is depicted within one of Alberta's own ritual being beaten with fish.
Also featured within the wall drawing are more iconic religous symbols including the madonna and those which are more personal to the artist including Ethiopian Afro angels and monkeys which seem to be making a mockery of their surroundings. Fiat Lux is a three-minute film according to the Barbados Advocate and runs for the rest of the month at Zemicon Gallery, Bridgetown, Barbados.
Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Wide_Sargasso_Sea, In_the_News
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