Cazabon: Clearing the Slate

My personal view is that no one has the right to limit an artist’s reading of particular periods in history, as much as no one has a right to limit and dictate the audiences’ reactions. I do however firmly believe that situations of conflict should encourage dialogue with an attempt to arrive at a viable compromise rather than attempts to prove our individual rightness. I offered some questions to the comments on my Facebook page in this effort: How is the pain of slavery perpetuated in modern Trinidad that we are continuously reminded of the trauma? What memories did the Mac Farlane portrayal elicit? Why the issue with the image in question? Is it the hashtag ‘knowyourplace’? How then should Mac Farlane have represented his take on the era? Some persons agreed that the portrayal was a great idea, but perhaps it was politically wrong in its set up. The majority didn’t address the questions but continued on a tirade about pain and trauma. On a national scale, apart from Emancipation Support Committee Chairman Khafra Kambon, who indicated that the hashtag #knowyourplace#, together with the image was offensive, a view with which I can agree, other opposing voices offered similar statements about trauma as the Facebook users.

Professor Patricia Mohammed, whose ‘Imaging the Caribbean’, is a cutting-edge work on how our Caribbean sensibilities have been shaped by the region’s iconography and how we have also used that iconography to tell the story of our experience, agreed that the hashtag coupled with the composition of the image was unfortunate and perhaps an ill-informed decision.

However, this issue as she noted, should force us to think about Mac Farlane’s motivation behind this particular presentation of the work. Mas, she further notes, ‘presents a perfect site for the interplay between the arts and the kinds of catharsis that art has allowed in other societies’.

And maybe, as we both agreed, it’s time that iconic mas men, engage the public in debate and learn about the sensitivities within the society as Mac Farlane himself acknowledged when he stated that there is still a lot for him ‘to explore, to learn and to unlearn.’ As far as some people’s view of Cazabon as a painter who glorified the slaves goes, Professor Selwyn Cudjoe’s ‘Beyond Boundaries’ presents the perspective that the mid- 1800s was a world in which the artist sought to reconcile ‘the social with the economical, the fading grandeur of an “aristocratic class” with the rise of a newly emancipated peasant class.’ So, while Cazabon’s images are idealized they can also be read as an artist’s attempt at giving dignity (in the way he saw dignity), to a class of people previously treated with less respect.

That goes for both Africans and East Indians whom he portrayed in idealized ways. This perspective also offers an alternative reading to the Mac Farlane mas.

We can safely agree that Mac Farlane’s intentions were not malicious.

His apology (though some people feel that it was just another way of sweeping abuse under the carpet while still abusing subversively) represents an attempt at that sensitivity. The mas and the images were intended to portray the dress and architecture of the era. While art glorifies, it is also escapist. The act of looking at art is an activity that gives us respite and allows for some release of hidden feelings.

The masquerade has traditionally been, in the history of Carnival, enactments of behaviours that, on a daily basis, are controlled, contained and in some cases denied.

The road therefore becomes a public performance space for citizens, an idea, that has been explored in academic literature. If the Cazabon mas has evoked such vehement opposition from some quarters, it is a telling sign of issues that are yet to be expunged. That the white/black juxtaposition can still evoke anger, speaks of a society that is, unlike our description, not the glorified melting pot we persist in describing it as.

Mac Farlane’s section “La Belle Dame and Gar?on de la Maison” – The Pretty Lady and the House Boy”, offers us an opportunity for healthy dialogue about our race relationships, the responsibility of art and its use in creating versions of the past and current history of the society. It also allows us to confront ourselves, and examine the hurt and anger of the past and the present, and should inspire us to ask ourselves the questions: Why is there this persistence of pain? Are we at all interested in resolving the trauma? If, so, how do we address it to move forward?