Tools of struggle, sites of resistance

"When you stop speaking your own language, it kills you." --Mogauwane Mahloele
"If you stop dancing, you lose." --Chamroeun Yin
"All of this: it's about respect." --Bud Little Wolf
"It's the one time the community totally owns the streets." --Deborah Wei
"This art is a gift; it's medicine." --Bud Little Wolf
"This is how they survived and the knowledge has been passed on to this day." --Blanche Epps
"I am one person keeping it alive." --Bud Little Wolf
"As for speaking the truth, we don't have any other choice." --Mogauwane Mahloele

Folk arts are sometimes dismissed as simple, old-fashioned, or conservative - but beneath their surfaces can lie complicated histories, functions, and meanings. The folk arts shown here work hard: they link people to heritage and lost homes, they tell stories of tragedy to the rest of the world, and they create resources for resistance. They allow complicated responses to difficult questions.

Precisely because they offer indirect critiques of power, many folk art forms that do not seem overtly political have been effective tools of survival and sites of resistance. Folk arts can allow people to imagine and rehearse freedom in times and places where political repression or oppressive systems make direct opposition impossible.

In Philadelphia, a traditional festival like Chinese New Year annually turns the world upside down, changing the balance of power. Folktales exchanged at a social gathering create satisfying moments in which the poor but clever trickster bests a more powerful adversary. Folk arts can be a life preserver for ideas about freedom and liberation. The people who sing, tell, make, and use these arts play important but mostly unacknowledged roles in sustaining resistance and the imagination of freedom.

The challenges posed by folk arts, and their progressive possibilities, are not always readily visible. Yet their practice can be an unknown and dangerous path.

 

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Edwin Arocho

Vejigante de la Libertad, 1992
Plaster of paris
Courtesy of the Honorable Angel Ortiz

Arocho's maskmaking, inspired by vejigante masks made for carnival in Ponce and Loíza Aldea in Puerto Rico, was sparked by the experience of being a Puerto Rican emigrant here. As a student, Arocho experienced a kind of subtle prejudice that he calls "passive-aggressive," where people were not necessarily openly hostile to him, but rather would not acknowledge his (culturally different) presence. This experience provoked a lot of soul-searching, and he eventually realized that, "...being a Puerto Rican here in the United States is much more difficult, it takes much more energy, and it's much more fulfilling at the end than being a Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico. So that's why I stayed." Thus began a return to his roots and a remembering of childhood experiences in Puerto Rico, especially witnessing carnival processions in Ponce, that led him to start making vejigante masks. Arocho has experimented here with different painting styles, and has made some non-traditional masks. This mask, made to look like the Statue of Liberty, commemorates a protest by Puerto Rican activists in New York in the 1970s.

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Frito Bastien

Autumn in the Forest, 1996
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist

Paintings can use imagery and symbols, to communicate dangerous messages when direct expression is impossible. Although many of his paintings evoke joyful memories of Haiti, his homeland, several of Frito Bastien's works include details that subtly introduce an element of violence, evil, or danger into an apparently idyllic scene. This was a strategy traditionally employed by Haitian artists who could not safely voice opposition to a repressive regime. Popular singers and painters in Haiti often used a form of coding to express themselves on political matters. For example, one popular metaphor, present in both songs and paintings, compared the political situation to a jungle full of dangerous wild animals. There were lions that ate people, tigers that killed people, and giraffes that dominated the landscape and, with their long, flexible necks, easily gobbled up whatever they choe from the treetops - a coded portrait of violent and corrupt political and military elites and their ill-gotten wealth and power. Bastien draws on this metaphor in this work, a peaceable woodland scene in which an over-sized giraffe peers incongruously through the trees. In Haiti, painting and displaying such a picture could land one in jail or worse.

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Unknown Artist

Lion, 1987
Painted papier-mâché and cloth made in Hong Kong
Courtesy of Sifu Shu Pui Cheung

"In Chinatown on New Year's, the whole community is out at twelve o'clock on a weeknight. The police have blocked the streets. People are running all over, setting off fire crackers. It's the one time when the community really totally owns the streets. There's no tourists. It's just folks who have a reason to be there.

Lion dancing is a lot more popular in the south, where most people from Chinatown come from. Because it's associated with kung fu, it is by and large pretty working class. This is not a rich boy's sport. You're paid as entertainment by people who have money, to appear at celebrations, and bring luck.

My son Aaron, who is a lion dancer with Sifu Shu Pui Cheung now - he was the one who came home from school in kindergarten and told me that he didn't want to be Chinese anymore. So I said, 'Why do you say that?' And he said, 'Chinese people are stupid. In school everyone calls me the stupid Chinese boy.' So I said, 'Do you think you're stupid?' And he said 'no.' And I said, 'Is Mommy stupid? Is Daddy stupid? And I went through this litany but at the end of that he still kept saying, 'But Chinese people are stupid.' So this constant assault on his identity, on who he was, it was just very painful. How he got into kung fu, I think, was his own child's way of seizing power. I think he's come to the realization that he ain't gonna change who he is. He's Chinese, it's not something he can get away from. He is very conscious about race. You watch him trying to make sense of this thing, whatever this thing is, in his mind. And one day, I was walking in Chinatown and I saw my old Sifu, my kung fu teacher. And I introduced them and Sifu looked at my son and said. 'Do you want to come and study kung fu?' And Aaron looked at him and his eyes got real big and he said 'Yeah.' And it was the first time I saw him like actually interested in anything Chinese. So I started taking him and he just got totally into it, and after that he got totally proud of being Chinese. He's looking at these pop icons - Jackie Chan and Jet Li - almost as life preservers. His kung fu school, it's the one place in Philadelphia where it's like all the other guys are listening to the Chinese guy." --Deborah Wei

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Blanche Epps

Canning that includes: strawberry jam, blackberry jam, strawberry rhubarb, burberry, bread and butter pickles and vegetables from Ms. Epps' garden, 1998
Courtesy of the artist

"I can put in dandelions, plantain, chickweed, lambsquarters, okra, greens - all of this is grown by mother nature which was originally eaten by African Americans to sustain themselves on the plantation. I have herbs, berries, fruits, vegetables from the past to the present and the present to the past. Because my great uncle who was ninety-five, he was a slave. So these are things that were passed down. Because the master didn't but give them bread and water to live, but they knew they needed more to sustain them, so they found grasses and natural foods that they got from their own home. They used to steal from the family garden and with the rotten meat, they knew how to make a meal and not be sick. And this is how they survived, and this knowledge has been passed on to this day." --Blanche Epps

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Mogauwane Mahloele

Makhoyane (South African musical bow), 1997
Gourd, wood and metal wire
Courtesy of the artist

"The way I see it - because I have not voluntarily joined people in exile - I was forced out of my home, my people, my roots, my whole life. I have spent now more than twenty years trying to make people, more especially in Europe and America, to understand exactly where I was coming from. But it is hard because you have to crack at this big opaque wall until you can be allowed in. The society is not going to open up, because of their teachings about who we are. There are things that are very hard in exile - let alone practicing your own rituals, your own language. Once you stop practicing your own language, when you stop speaking your own language, it kills a man's pride. It kills you. Because that is the way you can communicate best. What about it if you speak for justice? It is about speaking the truth. But there is all us, there are a lot of us in exile. And as for speaking the truth, we don't have any other choice." --Mogauwane Mahloele

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Eang Mao

Ah Chey and the Chewing Pouch, 1997
Oil on canvas by Eang Mao
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Folklore Project

"One time, the rich man gave Ah Chey his chewing pouch, in which he carried his betels and nuts. The rich man told Ah Chey to carry his pouch for him, and to follow him on a visit to the palace. The rich man rode on a horse and Ah Chey ran after. The pouch was heavy and Ah Chey did not tie it up - so everything fell out as he ran. When the rich man got to the palace, he called Ah Chey to bring his pouch but there was nothing in it. The rich man asked, 'Where is my betel and nuts?' Ah Chey said, 'I ran after you. You were riding too fast and I do not know where the betel and nuts went. I did not dare to stop to pick them up because I was afraid that I would lose you.' The rich man said, 'Next time, don't embarrass me like this. If anything falls off, you must pick it up.' So next time, Ah Chey was ready to pick everything up, and he did - he even picked up the horse droppings. When they arrived at the palace, the rich man called Ah Chey again, asking for his chewing pouch. When he opened up the pouch, he saw that it was full of horse droppings. The rich man was very embarrassed and shouted at Ah Chey, 'Why did you put all of these horse droppings in the pouch?' Ah Chey answered, "You told me to pick everything up!'" - told by Touch San, translated by Chiny Ky

This traditional Khmer folktale is one of many stories told by Khmer refugees here, survivors of the Khmer Rouge. It concerns a poor servant who outwits his rich and powerful master. Ah Chey wins this power struggle by taking his master's words literally: his seeming stupidity masks his cleverness. Ah Chey refuses to take his master's crap (figuratively) and gives him his own crap back (literally).

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Bud Little Wolf

Standing Bear, 1999
Owl, 1998
Walking Bear, 1999
Courtesy of United American Indians of the Delaware Valley

"First, it's a gift: carving was given to me. It's like a bunch of angels came around me, and they probably do! Doing this keeps me standing up: it gives me stamina and spiritual self-healing. It's medicine to me. My mother taught me about the owl. One day I was standing in the woods and here there was an owl, talking to me. I come from North Carolina, from the Cherokee people. Carving is a dying art and I am one person keeping it alive. All of this: it's about respect." --Bud Little Wolf

Don Manuel

Blue Catfish, 1996
Bass, 1994
Turtle carving (made for artist's brother), 1997
Courtesy of United American Indians of the Delaware Valley

"There's a feeling in me that wants to bring something out of the wood. It's something that's just natural for me. I never had any formal artistic training. When I see something, it stays in my mind, and when I'm carving a piece of wood, I visualize what I want out of it, and I remove everything else. You just take everything away that you don't need, and there's your turtle, carved in wood.

My younger brother was killed about two years ago in an auto accident, and his nickname was Turtle. I was actually carving this for him when he got killed. It's a snapping turtle. My dad taught him to hunt turtles in the ponds and the creeks, with a stick. If they put the stick down on top of a turtle's back or a rock, they could tell the difference. And then they would reach down in the water, and by touching the turtle, they knew which end was which. He never got bit. That's how my younger brother got the nickname Turtle. Turtle Manuel, because he was probably the best turtle catcher around.

This carving takes me back to the days. You see, I was raised on a small farm, in Illinois. People used to say we lived like Indians - and we did. Everything we ate, we raised or hunted. Our only fresh meat was meat from hunting.

One of my plans, if I live long enough, is to start teaching. One of my main goals right now is to get younger people interested for two reasons. One is to continue the Native heritage and the Native craftsmanship, and also to get them interested in something besides smoking crack and that kind of thing. If I can keep just one or two kids from going out and doing something destructive, then it's all worth it..." --Don Manuel

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Chamroeun Yin

Ogre Masks for Cambodian Classical Dance, 1994
Papier-mâché, acrylic, plaster, oil paint, gold leaf, mat board and rhinestones
Courtesy of the artist

"If they found out you were a dancer, or a singer at the palace, the Khmer Rouge would have killed you. Sometimes you wanted to feel good, to remember the past, but even thinking about the foods of the past - nobody could say anything about that. Some places they would kill you for that. I told them I went to seventh grade, because otherwise they would kill or hurt us because they would think we were educated. I had to lie to survive. And many dancers died. There are not so many people who know all the stories the dances tell, or how they teach Khmer values.

When I was learning the dance in the refugee camps, they were always thinking dance was for the ladies only and the people called all of us boys who did the dance 'aktoeuy,' a way of cursing, like saying 'faggot.' And when my friend heard the people calling us names like that, he wanted to stop dancing. But my teacher told us, 'You know who you are. You know how to do the dance. You have to preserve your culture.' My teacher said, 'If you stop dancing, you lose. Then the one cursing you is the one who wins. Remember that you will be the one on the stage, and they will know nothing.' I try to remember that.

And here, not so many people are interested in the dance. If you are talking about Cambodian dance only a few of them watch and they go up front and make fun and everybody laughs. And I'm feeling, 'Why?'" --Chamroeun Yin

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Last update: February 16, 2006

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Exhibit Links:
Introduction
Tools of struggle
 · Edwin Arocho
 · Frito Bastien
 · Sifu Shu Pui Cheung
 · Blanche Epps
 · Mogauwane Mahloele
 · Eang Mao
 · Bud Little Wolf & Don Manuel
 · Chamroeun Yin
The people united
 · Chants
 · Signs & slogans
Big shoes to fill
 · Tell us your stories
 · How to do it
Freedom is my badge
 · Button collections
Stories to live by
 · Robert M. Smith
 · Rafaela Colón
 · Peang Koung
 · Father Paul M. Washington
Credits