thePULSESelected Works, 1997-2004
December 2005 –
Willie Cole’s installation “To Get to the Other Side” is both figuratively and literally the centerpiece of his current exhibition in the contemporary gallery at the Worcester Art Museum. It is a 16 x 16-foot galvanized steel chessboard populated by 32 two-foot tall black lawn jockeys. What?! Yes, this piece is fraught with political and social commentary, repelling and attracting simultaneously. Imagine someone having the nerve to even mention these second-rate walkway ornaments, let alone recreate and show them publicly ~ especially since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964! But that’s just the point.
Born in 1955 in Newark, New Jersey, Cole was swept up in the Civil Rights movement and as a teenager became actively involved in researching his African heritage, learning about traditional Yoruba art in high school and later at the BU School of Fine Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Today, he uses his deep interest in West African culture, mythology, and religion to make his artwork both visually playful and thought provoking.
Transfixed by Cole’s knife-wielding armies of lawn jockeys, I did some research of my own and discovered that the very first statue was commissioned by none other than the Father of Our Country, George Washington, to memorialize his faithful groomsman, Joque Graves (hence the bastardized name “Jockey”). Prior to and during the American Civil War, these figures were actually used as secret signals by members of the Underground Railroad. If a lantern or flag were placed in the forward reaching hand, the house was safe. If the hand were empty, it meant that the place was being watched and that travelers should move on.
Cole has also made constant reference to the simple clothing iron, creating very large, boat-like versions like WAM’s wooden “Kanaga Field Iron” and the wicker “Chewa 600.” Included in this exhibit are two large Iris prints showing top views of irons that strongly reference the symmetrical Dogon masks worn by West African men during certain ancestral celebrations. The show’s title comes from several wall works produced by scorching wood or canvas surfaces with myriad imprints from a hot iron.
Far more elegant and sensual is the small grouping of Cole’s TjiWara series, works made of colorful cut up and recycled bicycle parts. These arresting and gracefully curving objects are based on carved wooden antelope headdresses worn by Bamana men in Mali. The original African objects celebrate “The Beast that Works,” a mythological hero that taught humans to cultivate the land and thus survive as a stable community. The use of bicycle parts also implies athletic strength and prowess ~ revered by the Bamana and African-Americans alike.
Perhaps the most ominous sculpture in this show is the rather amusing “Malcolm’s Chickens III.” This jaunty 4-foot long fowl is made of hundreds of matches all glued together. But in Cole’s world it is a contemporary Trojan Horse – a firebomb disguised as art.
