As civil war wrenches a country apart, forced migration is often inevitable. While migration may thwart immediate danger, the enduring consequences of leaving one's homeland are extensive. This month in the Slater Concourse Gallery at Tufts, two anthropology-based exhibits aim to bridge the chasm between traditional culture and new life, invoking memory while simultaneously looking towards the future.
The two exhibits are on display until March 30, "From Yucuaiquin to Somerville: El Baile de los Negritos" and "Leave the Bones and Catch the Land: South Sudanese Art from Kakuma Refugee Camp," and were installed as part of the Greater Boston Anthropology Consortium Student Conference held in Aidekman last Friday. Each exhibit is the culmination of an anthropology class at an affiliated university. While the exhibits are both smaller excerpts from earlier exhibitions, their location parallel to each other in the Slater Gallery provides for a unique and interactive joint show.
From El Salvador to Somerville
"From Yucuaiquin to Somerville: El Baile de los Negritos" has its roots here at Tufts. Senior Sebastian Chaskel developed the exhibit as an offshoot of Urban Borderlands, an anthropology class focused on Somerville's Latino community. The exhibit traces a customary religious dance from its home in Yucuaiquin, El Salvador to the community of Yucuaiquin immigrants in Somerville, many of whom migrated here during the repression and ensuing civil war of the 1980s. "Their dance allows them to connect with their traditions," Chaskel said, "while helping them build community in their new home, the U.S."
"Leave the Bones and Catch the Land: South Sudanese Art from Kakuma Refugee Camp" hails from the Brandeis University class "Museums and Public Memory," taught by Dr. Mark Auslander. Auslander's course emphasizes student-community interaction to create a collaborative community-based exhibition.
This year, Auslander's students curated an exhibit of paintings created by displaced Southern Sudanese at a refugee camp in Kenya. Auslander said that he and his students sought "to develop an exhibition that really reflected the interests of the refugee community."
In order to reflect the interests of their partner communities, the curators of each exhibit listened to their respective community's voice in the form of an oral history. An oral history approach involves conducting interviews with community members in order to provide first-hand accounts.
These community voices did not only serve as a basis of anthropological studies, but were also present in the final exhibitions of each project.
Yucuaiquin dance the night away at Somerville Museum
Chaskel's initial exhibition was held at the Somerville Museum last April. The exhibit provided a background of Yucuaiquin and the community in Somerville, with an emphasis on Saint Francis of Assisi. "People pray to Saint Francis for all kinds of things," Chaskel said, "and they often pay back by dancing el Baile de los Negritos. When people from Yucuaiquin immigrate to the U.S., they often pray to Saint Francis for help. Once they are here, they feel an obligation to dance for him."
But at the Somerville Museum, "El Baile de los Negritos" was not simply an informational exhibit. On opening day, a crowd of Yucuaiquinenses and guests gathered in the main room to watch the annual dance take place.
"The thing that excited me the most was that we had the masks under glass, but then when the Yucuaiquinenses danced, they took them out of the glass, and danced with them," Chaskel said, "So people saw the same objects that were presented as art behind a glass then used [them] for dancing." With that, barriers between the art and the audience were broken and the exhibit became a genuine cultural interaction.
In addition, Chaskel valued the Yucuaiquinenses' opinions in the construction of the exhibit. While the Somerville Museum focused on the aesthetic aspects of his pictures, the Yucuaiquinenses saw this exhibit as a way to share their culture. Sebastian recalled that if a photograph depicted someone unfamiliar, they would ask him: "Who is this person in this exhibit? Why are we including him?"
In the exhibit at Slater, Chaskel was careful to use only pictures of important community members. The Yucuaiquin partner community also donated their masks, costumes and instruments used in the dance.
Southern Sudanese make their voices heard
The voices of the Southern Sudanese shine through "Leave the Bones and Catch the Land" in a more direct way. "The students really didn't want to impose simply their understanding of the art," Auslander said. "The students were very interested, as much as possible, in allowing the refugees' understanding of their own history to predominate."
This understanding began in the initial stages, as the Southern Sudanese refugees in Kakuma created the paintings that hang in the final exhibit. Atem Aleu, a refugee resettled to Utah, traveled back to the Kakuma camp with art supplies. He provided the refugees there with lessons, a museum label explains, "allowing them to capture their memories of home and to express their hopes for the future."
These memories and hopes are clearly captured. The brightly colored paintings cover a variety of topics ranging from lost traditions to the atrocities of war to prayers for the future. Each painting has its own powerful style and message.
To allow for an even greater Sudanese voice, Auslander's class paired the paintings with responses from Southern Sudanese refugees who had been resettled in the Greater Boston area. The result was a series of museum labels comprised of Sudanese interpretations of the paintings. As Auslander said, "The paintings inspire amazing stories."
The resettled refugees' voices were actually heard in the initial exhibit at Brandeis. Museum-goers could browse the exhibit while listening to recordings of the interpretations. These clips are now available as audio commentary on the exhibit's Web page.
Art for art's sake?
As both exhibits were envisioned in an anthropological mindset, the curators are exceptionally aware of how their partner communities are portrayed and received.
"People often think that the word 'art' only applies to artwork that is done for art's sake," Chaskel said. He cautions against this view, explaining that it allows for a limited understanding. In his exhibit, he says he tries "to encourage people to expand their definition of art."
So what, then, should art be? The Baile de Los Negritos is beautiful in the traditional sense, but also is something more, something with a "cultural purpose," Chaskel said.
For the Yucuaiquinenses, this purpose is two-fold. "In Yucuaiquin, the dance is religious and celebratory in nature," reads a museum label, "while in Somerville much emphasis is placed on preserving the tradition."
Chaskel suggests that the purpose here is not merely preservation, but rather "actually adapting this old dance to a new environment." He sees the Yucuaiquinenses as simultaneously "preserving their history while moving into the future in a new place."
"Leave the Bones and Catch the Land" holds a similarly multifaceted meaning. "The artists do understand themselves as artists," Auslander said, and they are "very interested in how the work will be viewed." The exhibit includes a comment book that will be sent back to the refugee camp next month.
"I don't think we do damage when we view the paintings aesthetically," Auslander said, "but it's also important that we understand that there's an important history there."
Aduei Riak, a senior at Brandeis University and a former refugee of the Kakuma camp, also advises against a singularly aesthetic view. "People tend to separate art from realities," Aduei said. She reminds viewers to link the paintings "to the daily realities that people like myself had to live with."
"It's not just art," Auslander said. "This art is the crystallization of their suffering. It's the most powerful recollection of the genocide."
Seeing real results
Each exhibit recognizes the therapeutic role that creative expression can assume in coping with contemporary diaspora.
"Migration can hurt people's culture," Chaskel said. "It means that people are no longer in their usual settings. They may not be able to participate in their usual rituals. They may no longer be with their families."
But these projects are not simply a way to deal with the past. They open a door to the future. The wall text explains that "Leave the Bones and Catch the Land" takes its name from a Sudanese saying that is "a call to move beyond the pain of tragic loss and embrace the world of the living."
"El Baile de los Negritos" spreads a hopeful message as well. "The Yucuaiquinenses see the exhibition as a way of sharing their culture and helping people have a better feeling about immigrants," Chaskel said. "Immigrants bring rich traditions, and this is often not shared."
There have been many concrete results as well. For the Yucuaiquinenses, these results took the form of a Sister City agreement signed between Yucuaiquin and Somerville a few weeks ago. Chaskel's exhibit provided the inspiration.
Auslander's class encourages many forms of active engagement regarding the issues that have affected the Southern Sudanese. The paintings exhibited have been purchased by private donors and donated to Brandeis University. The money will be sent back to the artists at the camp in Kakuma.
A continuing dialogue
While the Slater Concourse Gallery may be missing out on the community involvement present in the original two exhibitions, this joint exhibit introduces a unique new dialogue. "What makes the Slater Concourse special right now is that you have two exhibitions on two immigrant communities speaking to each other," Chaskel said.
Auslander agrees. "It's been really wonderful watching this collaborative relationship between Tufts and Brandeis emerge." And it isn't over yet. The anthropology departments of Tufts and Brandeis are organizing a roundtable discussion among the student curators and their partners in the Yucuaiquin and Sudanese communities.
The forum, tentatively set for Tuesday, March 27, will be open to the Tufts public. With this, the Yucuaiquinenses and the Sudanese will actually come together to speak to one another, filling in where the exhibits leave off.
