#tumblr/Laura Facey

[sexypinkon]

SEXYPINK INTERVIEW - JAMAICAN SCULPTOR -LAURA FACEY

In Laura's own words she recalls for Sexypink some of her feelings about making the monument.

..............................................................................

The Naked REDEMPTION SONG Monument

While conceptualizing the design for the monument in 2002, I struggled over the idea of ‘draping’ my figures. In the end I decided it would ‘date’ the work…thinking, being naked would be more timeless.

After the initial shock of Jamaica’s ferocious response to the unveiled monument, I retreated to my own world to ‘wait out’ the outcome. I realized everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Eighteen years after the installation, Maroon Elder Joseph White, explained to me what the monument meant to him and to Jamaica’s history.

“On Emancipation Day, 1st August, 1838, some plantation owners gave another humiliating indignation to their soon to be freed enslaved — they stripped them of their clothing! —‘Bakra seh, uno free but yu clothes no free’. The naked free who took to the roads were arrested for indecent exposure. Their previous owners would be the ones able to release them. The bolder free took to the rivers with the only thing they had left, their modesty and the fact that if accused of being naked they could claim they were bathing.

Rivers symbolically washed away the horror of their lives (the reason the Emancipation figures stand in a pool of flowing water) and shielded them until they arrived at a safer place (rivers follow roads), to, in theory, begin a new life”.  After the unveiling, yes, I was in shock for the first weeks then I was in awe of this ferocious debate for and against the naked figures, which played out for months.

Truthfully, I did question my decision for making them naked but now, 20 plus years later, I ‘give it up’, rightly or wrongly, as inspiration passing through me!

Laura Facey

a reflection on Laura Facey's Redemption Song...

Sexypink - So often when visualizing a work, you never know why you may get a strong hunch or follow a need to add specific symbolism. As I read Laura Facey's recollections on the creation of the monumental Redemption Song in Jamaica, I was particularly struck by the Maroon Elders' words about nakedness at the moment of Emancipation and thereafter.

I believe that works like Ms Facey's endure because it must. The reaction to the nudity by so many during the unveiling questions how far we have come in regard to slavery itself. It is still debated whether we can put it behind us. It also begs the question of what is freedom itself?

The slave is always reminded of the price it costs to be present. Imagine that the only solace for being stripped of one's dignity repeatedly was to give the impression of bathing as a passive choice. Ms Facey was correct in her instincts about the bare skin, her Adam and Eve, heads held high in the Jamaican hot sun answer the call to their freedom and beyond.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Jamaican Sculptor Laura Facey asks for assistants from St. Ann’s preferably for her latest production.

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - A reminder to the hard road to acceptance. Redemption Song by Jamaican Artist Laura Facey.