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Exhibitions - Artist: Theodore A. Harris"Our Flesh of Flames" Collages by Theodore A. Harris and captions by Amiri Baraka Teddy Harris's work is the modernism of everyday perception and rationale. He makes works from vouchsafes and unrealized dreams, lies and advertisements for the nowheres. That is, he takes scraps of America North and threads them through his truthoscopic sensibility, for instance, pieces of newspapers, headlines, images from the diversity of our mostly grim experience, and he tells it to us again, Harris is a collagist, itself a modern form, and one that has been used to great advantage in pinning the political tale on the donkey, or elephant (or corrupt tiger, as the case may be, e.g. one of the greatest practitioners of the collage art for popular advantage, that is, to tell the truth, was the German collagist Heartfield, who actually pulled Hitler's tail during the waning years of democracy in Germany. Right-wing politicians feared Heartfield (Herzfeld) because he used the collage to whack them sharply across the face, and lips, revealing their lies and evil to the people). Harris, still a young man, has entered the collage with an astonishing clarity of form. The diverse pieces of reflected reality and unreality he thinks and pastes together create new images, replenishing our knowledge of the known, or making us aware of the unknown. There is a clarity and cleanness to his craftsmanship, which heightens the ideational projection the image sprays at us. At times, visual image actually seems to "say" out loud what maybe we know or need to know. Yet, he has put it together with an impressive display of knowledge about the medium he is using. There are no sloppy or half put together "slapdashes" which we must sympathetically take to the hoop with our political sympathies. Harris is a fine "auteur" (as the film magazines say, meaning, author, creator ) And with this, the content, which, for me, is always principal, emerges bright He tells about the peoples' struggles, world wide, against oppression and exploitation. Our lives under racism and the twisted rule of capital, At times, the images he thrusts at us are sharp enough to make us wince, with understanding and recognition. Harris' work is fundamentally about consciousness raising, and this is what art does. Mao say, "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is Art!" Harris' work speaks to us truthfully, forcefully, and with great skill. You need to check it out! Statements from the artist - After reading this consciousness-raising poem, I felt as if I was being hunted everywhere. I had to check out my surroundings: where was I being hunted, why was I being hunted, for how long? What I found out early on was that our blood is the mortar, and the bricks of our black and red bones built this country's capitol and its capital. From then on, I knew I had to strike back with the only weapon I have-art. With my pen and scissors I will avenge the senseless deaths of my ancestors, I would indict America in the courtroom of my own opinion, HERE IN THESE UNITED-AGAINST-US STATES WHERE INTERROGATION ROOMS NEVER CLOSE, POLICE AT THE MOUNT CALVARY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY PUT SILENCEERS ON CRUCIFIXION NAILS, BEAT US INTO INTERSTELLAR SPACE WITH WET TELEPHONE BOOKS, GIVE RECTAL EXAMINATIONS WITH TOILET PLUNGERS IN THEIR PRECINCT BATHROOMS! When I look at the history of this country and our involvement in it as Africans in America, I see us always struggling to get out from under the slave ships, the rapes, the whips, the chains, the prisons, the nightsticks, the Patriot Act police, and Campus Watch, which aid in "the nazification of America" according to Toni Morrison,3 by detaining independent thinkers in jails of character assassination, rulers with bombs and bullets of imperialism aimed at unarmed protesters fire-hosed with the slobber of barking dogs! It is because of this I became a confrontational collagist, engaged in visual warfare, decolonizing the mind through collage. For my question is, who is going to fight in the visual arts and literature against the mayor-gargoyle Giulianis' of the world, who have made it clear that our vetoed dreams don't count. As Amiri Baraka said: "Every day what becomes clearer and clearer is the desperation of this system. The United States bourgeoisie reminds me of a man running away from a lion, who keeps throwing out pieces of meat until finally his little bag is empty and the only piece of meat left is himself."4 Or, in the words of Ngugi Wa Thiongo: "Art is more powerful when working as ally of the powerless than it is when allied to repression. For its essential nature is freedom. While that of the state is restriction and regulation of freedom."5 Both points are further illustrated in the April 2003 issue of Harper's Magazine, which reported, "On January 27, 2003, a tapestry of Pablo Picasso's epic painting Guernica that hangs at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations in New York City was deemed an inappropriate background for press briefings about the possibility of a war in Iraq. It was therefore draped." These actions by the state only confirm to me that I'm aiming my combative collages in the right direction. I now see my work functioning as visual poetic essays. When folks view my work, I want them to come away with the strength to keep on, holding on to these fraying ropes of struggle. I hope that what I'm creating is purposeful for people to use in this racial and class struggle, as a weapon in this fight Lamont B. Steptoe labels a "low-intensity war" Theodore A. Harris
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