New Mexico poet and artist, Dale Harris, took the lead in bringing Gao's work and mine, inspired by his, to Albuquerque. While I had used a computer graphic program (Illustrator) and the oldest Egyptian pictographs I could find on line ( F. Raffaele, G. Dreyer) to add my interpretation to 5 familiar tales from Western mythology (Egyptian, Sumerian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman) add, Harris used handmade paper, grasses, and branches gathered in the countryside between her home and the Petroglyph National Monument outside Albuquerque to add her interpretation of her home land to those who had lived there before her. The show opened June 6th, 2008 and received front page coverage in arts section of the leading newspaper Albuquerque Journal. On June 20th, Harris led a lively discussion of questions raised by the juxtaposition of a Han calligraphy artist's interpretation of the Naxi genesis myth using Dongba pictographs, and our use of pictographs from other cultures. Had Gao inspired us to take liberties we would not have otherwise? What is the relation between an artist of one culture and the truths of the culture of another people? How does the response of an artist from a different time and place differ from that of a scientist, an anthropologist, an ethnographer?
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| snake from petroglyph |
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| artist's response |
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Lou Liberty, a
poet and retired professor of medieval studies, cited the view that a
language consists of a set of agreements on what symbols and/or sounds
represent. She noted that she found herself surrounded by magical
mysteries when she entered.
Indeed,
the Dongba, chroniclers and
scholars of the Naxi, were denoted with the word "shamen" by non-Naxi
Chinese introducing them to me and other international guests in
2001. This is the same word English speaking South Americans used
when I was first introduced to an indigenous curer, whose efficacy was
mysterious magic, when I was a student and bio-ethnography a new
subject. Aside from other factors making me see them as exotic,
mysterious, misunderstandable, most Americans have learned what we
have from indigenous shamen, shamefully. I asked a question
in English. Someone translated in Spanish what he thought I wanted to
know to someone who spoke Quechua. The Otavalo grandmother responds in
Quechua. Her daughter tells us in Spanish what she understands her
grandmother told me. And the Ecuadorian who took me to meet his
relatives in Otavalo gives me the answer he thinks proper. The same when I interviewed the Na, or Muso, grandmother in Lake Lugo.
But,
as Liberty explained, when she took the risk and ventured "literally inside the tent" the
mysterious writing on the outside was revealed mirror image as simple English.
Debbi Brody, owner of the Canyon Road Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe,
got to the bottom by asking, "How come the tent?" Caught off guard, I had to answer: Arabic is
written right to left. English left to right. For the words to agree,
one had to be written backward. Printed on transparent enough
fabric, you can read the backward English if you can get on the other
side, and I couldn't stretch it down the middle of the gallery without
getting in the way of the other artists the first time I showed it."
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| Discussion of Gao Feng, Dongba, and Naxi influence on American artists |
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| Dale Harris' PETROGLYPHS in window, Peggy Dobbins' "..DWELLING IN TENTS" on floor; Gao Feng's WORSHIP HEAVEN on 3 walls. |
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| when translating Arabic, write English backward |
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