BRISTOL, England — Donald Rodney noticed the world via metaphor. He suffered from sickle cell anemia all through his life, that means he endured ache, a tough remedy schedule, and lowered mobility. Relatively than shying away from these parts, he drew upon them as metaphors for the societal ills of racism, inequality, and colonialism in his artwork. Visceral Canker at Spike Island brings collectively all of Rodney’s surviving work, spanning 1982 to 1997, the yr earlier than he handed away at age 36.
The exhibition demonstrates the breadth of Rodney’s work and the numerous methods he included points of his sick physique, or else emphasised its frequent absence from household or art-world occasions. For instance, his 1987 work “The Home that Jack Constructed” is a self-portrait wherein a scarecrow-like determine sits in entrance of a silhouette of a home made from X-rays of the artist’s chest, whereas “My Mom, My Father, My Sister, My Brother” (1996–97) is a tiny sculpture of a home crafted from pores and skin taken from the artist’s physique throughout a medical operation. However probably the most shifting work of the present could be “Psalms” (1997), wherein an unoccupied motorized wheelchair programmed to keep away from obstacles strikes across the exhibition house.
Visceral Canker takes its title from a 1990 work of the identical identify. This piece consists of two picket plaques depicting the heraldic coats of arms of Queen Elizabeth I and John Hawkins, one of many first British slave merchants. These are superimposed by a collection of plastic tubes, intravenous drip luggage, wires, and electrical pumps circulating imitation blood. In 1564, Hawkins was given a royal ship in an effort to enslave Africans and promote them within the Spanish colonies within the West Indies; he finally kidnapped greater than 400 folks. His revenue was so nice that the queen granted him a brand new coat of arms bearing the picture of enslaved males. Rodney’s set up cuts to the guts of the little-known relationship between the slave commerce and Elizabeth I, who is commonly seen as a keystone of British historical past and nationwide pleasure. Throughout the lifeblood of Britain, Rodney suggests, there may be the ever-present “canker” (an Elizabethan time period for “illness”) of slavery and colonialism.
Whereas the elemental message of the work is immediately clear, the metaphors throughout the work are extra advanced than they seem at first look. As a substitute of utilizing a single pump system to maneuver the blood throughout each coats of arms, the work is divided into two imperfectly mirrored halves using separate circulatory techniques. This means not a easy linear connection between Elizabeth I and the slave commerce, however slightly a fancy systemic drawback that’s onerous to isolate and eradicate. The wall textual content notes that Rodney initially needed to make use of his personal blood, however the metropolis council who commissioned the work insisted upon using imitation blood. Rodney, due to this fact, needed to viscerally show his personal ancestral hyperlink to the Black folks enslaved by Hawkins and represented on his coat of arms, additional complicating the metaphor. It’s advanced, Rodney appears to say — and that’s not one thing to be resisted.
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker continues at Spike Island (133 Cumberland Street, Bristol, United Kingdom) via September 8. The exhibition was organized by Robert Leckie and Nicole Yip.