Real Wall: Bethani Blake
Real Art Ways
Hartford
Through March 17
Real Wall: Bethani Blake features the artwork of the titular artist, Bethani Blake, who works additionally as a curator and educator in Hartford. I enjoyed her overall exhibit, but there was one piece that especially spoke to me, in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
I’ve been thinking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail a lot recently. I watched it as a kid and didn’t understand it, but as I’ve gotten older my appreciation for its impact on comedy has grown. It’s one of those movies that even if you haven’t watched it, you’ve watched it, because its influence has shaped so many people since its release.
Blake’s piece Teen Marriage Portrait is reminiscent of both the style and impact of Holy Grail. There’s something silly about seeing the Wadsworth Atheneum’s associate curator for African Diaspora decked out in Arthurian gear, ready to retake Istanbul. But the line from her artist’s biography rang in my head as I looked at it: “A first generation Black person in an immediate family of white Americans, she grew up surrounded by iconography and other paraphernalia specific to American culture …”
In my opinion, one of the least discussed aspects of being a Black person in America (particularly one descended from enslaved people) is that we are the inheritors of the Western tradition, no matter how much racial segregation or our own rejection of it attempts to say otherwise. Culturally, we’re raised in a society that looks back on chivalry and courtly love favorably; genetically, the rape of our ancestors ties us by blood to the history that King Arthur represents.
So why can’t Blake imagine herself as a Christian warrior ready to rampage across Eurasia in the name of the throne? Such imagery is no more illegitimate than attempts to tie us to the African diaspora, a place that we come from but hardly know any better than Europe. As someone who has been fascinated by the concept of fealty, Blake’s artwork encourages me to want to learn more about the part of me that comes from Raglan Castle.
In an odd way, Blake’s piece Enrique is the contemporary version of her chivalrous artwork. The clothing is analogous, as both represent a culture at a specific point in time. A do-rag and a hoodie are both symbols of modern African American culture and a set of armor for going out to do battle. Or at least, they’re perceived that way — just ask Trayvon Martin. Chain mail has been transmuted to chain links behind the subject, a common sight in areas where certain people aren’t supposed to be in certain places.
It’s a crazy thing to be born Black in America, but it’s even wilder to be born Black when the rest of your family isn’t. My son has lived through such an experience; his mother is Puerto Rican and Palestinian, so he entered this world as a first-generation Black person, which is a brilliant phrase I’d never considered when describing him. Art gives us a language for concepts we haven’t even thought of yet, and Bethani Blake’s exhibit certainly gave me a new phrase for future use.
Real Wall: Bethani Blake continues at Real Art Ways through March 17.
