The Performance of Shadows

Intuition as embodied knowledge and political defiance.

by

In her 2021 book, The Deepest Dye: Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World, New York University cultural anthropologist Aisha Khan reflects on authorities’ reactions to the various religious practices of colonized labourers in the West Indies. “The anxiety was real, the disgust palpable, the titillation conspicuous, and the performance of shadows quite alive,” Khan wrote, referring to an unseen place where the body cannot be governed. While colonialism controlled the freedoms and whereabouts of racialized bodies, belief could not be dictated. Shadows, therefore, became liberating spaces of ritual and worship. 

Taking inspiration from Khan’s work, The Performance of Shadows, on view until April 29 at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery, examines worship as a form of intuitive knowledge. It includes work by what Toronto-based visiting curator Lillian O’Brien Davis calls a “constellation” of three stellar artists – Betye Saar, an African-American artist known for her assemblages; American-born Tim Whiten, a recipient of this year’s Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts; and Erika DeFreitas, who was on the long list for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. 

The dimly lit exhibition centres around Whiten’s Book of Light: Containing Poetry from the Heart of God, a pulpit-like stand that holds an impressive glass manuscript. The book has an intricate L on the top left corner, and the Toronto artist’s signature skull on the bottom right. Instead of a religious text, the book contains fragments of burnt paper that no longer hold knowledge, leaving viewers to imagine the book’s contents. Intuition is vital to Whiten’s practice. He isn’t interested in explaining his work, believing, instead, that viewers will take away what they need. In his Hallelujah I, situated on a nearby wall, lilac branches balance one another, creating an almost-mystical harmony. The piece brings nature into the gallery, suggesting visitors can connect with spirituality outside formal religion. 

Saar’s work also relies on intuition, with a focus on mysticism and the occult. After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she became increasingly political in her work, reclaiming racist ephemera and examining Black liberation through a lens of life, death and rebirth. In 1988, she created Cryptic Confessions: The Answer, combining Buddhist and ancient Egyptian imagery with a computer circuit. The work includes a hand, a symbol central to Saar’s practice and an indication of her interest in palmistry and embodied knowledge. 

DeFreitas often uses her practice to examine what is beyond rational knowledge, including religious beliefs. Here, she was inspired by the so-called Miracle of the Sun, in which multiple people claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary on Oct. 13, 1917 after staring at the sun in Fátima, a city in central Portugal. The event was apparently prophesized by three children who said they were visited by an angel who told them of the coming miracle. Thousands of people gathered to stare at the sun, and many claimed to have seen the Virgin. For her video, something else is happening, DeFreitas filmed the sun and included historical testimonials, such as: “There was something there. I know for sure.” The statements reflect a strong belief in the Virgin Mary, who the Toronto artist sees as an example of divine femininity. 

Whiten, in a recent talk at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, mused that language can be a prison because “it prevents us from being able to use those things that we can’t articulate.” For O’Brien Davis, The Performance of Shadows is the culmination of her search for what she describes as being “beyond language.” Viewers are encouraged to consider the work through their intuition, and in so doing, to enrich their embodied knowledge. ■

The Performance of Shadows at the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg from Feb. 16 to April 29, 2023.

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