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Conversation with Aubrey WilliamsRasheed Araeen

Version of record first published: 19 Jun 2008

To cite this article: Rasheed Araeen (1987): Conversation with Aubrey Williams, Third Text, 1:2, 25-52

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25

Conversation with

Aubrey WilliamsRasheed Araeen

Rasheed Araeen: Aubrey, could you tell us something about your life inGuyana before you came to Britain, particularly in relation to youraspirations to be a professional artist. Where did the aspirations comefrom?Aubrey Williams: Your opening is so complex; it's mind-boggling. Tostart with we in Guyana have no true concept of inspiration. It's toomodern. It's synthetic and too romantic in the English romantic sense. Ithas very little to do with making images...RA: I'm sorry. I meant aspirations.AW: Oh, aspirationl It's also a Western concept that I believe is onlycoming into active reality now in Guyana in relation to professionalartists. In my boyhood an artist was a person who sculpted or painted,doing something creative, you know, outside the norm...I was born intoa world in which there was a natural appreciation of excellence, and thispermeated the whole society. It went down to the grassroot peasants inthe country. An Indian farmer would make his rice-paddies in certainways what we call today 'artistic'. His mud fireplace would be like a pieceof sculpture. It's only now with the coming of modern technology and soon that these art forms or making of art have become part of professionalactivity...I must explain here that by 'Indian' I mean East Indian peoplewho were brought to Guyana from the Indian Subcontinent as indenturedlabour to work on sugar plantations. They have their own profoundconcepts and behaviour patterns and iconography which give themtremendous insight for handling the environment beautifully.RA: Are you saying then, Aubrey, that the inspiration to paint came fromthe East Indian people in Guyana?AW: No, no! I'm trying to get you to realise the early environment inwhich I found myself. Now it's different. But in my time what we calledartistic was part of my natural environment...RA: Were you not taught drawing at school?

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AW: In some ways, yes. But I was a child who found himself drawing. Iwas very good at drawing. In fact, I'm a child prodigy who never grewup...I will give you an early incident, the earliest incident I can rememberwhen I made a drawing that my father kept all his life. Think of me as avery precocious three year old sitting on the front steps of our littlecottage in a street called Bourda Street. 'Bourda' is a Dutch word. TheDutch once owned Guyana. Across from us was an old cemetery, anearly colonial cemetery. Many of the tombstones in that cemetery havevery British colonial names. It was more or less a park at the time...As Iwas sitting there in front of my house I saw a turkey vulture pick up adead rat from the grass verge of the road and fly over into the cemetery. Iquickly ran up into the house, got my little drawing pad and came back,and made a drawing of the vulture tearing the rat apart on a whitetombstone. This was about four in the afternoon, and my father whoworked at the post office at the time came home riding his bicycle. Heparked his bicycle under the house — the house was built on the stilts,you know, and he came up and saw me drawing: 'what are you doing,son?', and he looked at the drawing and said, 'what's all this'. He snatchedthe drawing from me, rather viciously I thought, ran down the steps andhopped on his bicycle and vanished around the corner. My mother thencame out and said to me, 'didn't I hear daddy come'. I said 'yes', and I toldmy mother what happened. You see, I was in a state of shock. I thought Idid something wrong. About an hour later I saw my father coming backwith another man, a European. This was the first time I saw this Europeanman; his name was Mr De Winter and he did restoration work inchurches. He was a very skillful restorer. He came into my life this wayand he was in our lives for about five years. So, if you talk about an earlyteacher, he was a teacher. But he never taught me as a matter of fact, theway art is taught in this country. I myself as a teacher go back to the wayDe Winter guided me because it's up to now the best method I have comeacross. He never taught me how to draw things. He would give me a taskto perform, say, ask me to draw some animals or fruits. He would thentake the drawing and see if it was good. He would never correct thedrawing. He would instead make another drawing...RA: Have you still got those things you did when you were very young orthey have been lost?AW: Not lost, man! My whole family has them. It's a large family —aunts, uncles, cousins and so on. They were like predators, man! As fastas I did anything, it vanished. Whenever they visited our home, the firstthing they did was to look for my drawings.RA: So, in fact, right from the beginning you had a very encouragingenvironment.AW: But I didn't understand at the time that I was an artist and I had aclientele.RA: But there were people around you who appreciated what you weredoing. I think you were very lucky.AW: I know I was very lucky. I have been very lucky all my life.RA: So, at what age did it come home to you that you were going to be aprofessional artist?AW: Oh, no, I didn't understand the concept of professional artist for along time. What I mean to say is that I did not paint because I knew I wasgoing to be a professional artist.

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RA: Even though you don't like to use the word 'professional', you wereinvolved from an early age with people who considered art or painting aserious business, a profession. I'm here referring to Burrowes and hisWorking People's Art Group. You were closely associated with Burrowesbefore you came to England. Could you tell us something about theWorking People's Art Group and what was your own relationship withit?AW: I joined the Group first as a boy when I was still in school. Burrowesused to hold classes at night in a school where he was kindly givenpremises by some people to run his classes.

I was one of many students. The Working People's Art Groupcomprised old people, toddlers, anybody who was interested in art. Thisman Burrowes was a genius. He opened the Guyanese eyes to art, in itsaesthetic sense. In the beginning he didn't call his classes by any name. Hewas only interested in taking art classes in his free time. You mustremember Burrowes was a tailor by profession. He was one of the finesttailors in Guyana. He picked up painting as a hobby, but he was always abrilliant painter. I would place him, say, in European Impressionism. Buthe never saw the originals. What he saw were reproductions until he cameto Europe about ten years before he died.RA: But, that was the kind of situation common to all colonisedcountries. We are all taught through reproductions, through the casts ofGreek or Roman busts...AW: But in Guyana we did not even have that kind of art teaching. Wedidn't have anything. It's very important what I'm saying here...I havetold you about my first acquaintance with the Group — 'acquaintance' isthe best word to describe my relationship with the Working People's ArtGroup. I stayed with them from say twelve to about fifteen when I had totake up my academic studies seriously again because I had an apprentice-ship to a special course in agriculture. So, that was the end of my firstassociation with the Group.

When I became a qualified field officer in the department of agricul-ture, I made acquaintance again with Burrowes and started art classes inthe agriculture districts I was working in. From time to time Burroweswould leave Georgetown and would come up to me wherever I workedand we would start new classes, and this way we set up Working People'sArt Groups everywhere; which by that time had become an establishedsort of institution in Guyanese society. He began to get government helpto the extent that he was sent over here on a two years course. Anyway,with the help of school masters and important people in different villageswe managed to spread art classes all over along the east coast of Guyana.RA: So, you really got involved in a big way — no longer as a student butas a contributor...AW: Yes, as a lecturer, as an organiser. I carried on with the work evenwhen Burrowes could not come up into the country. I myself establishednew groups and worked with people using the teaching methods ofBurrowes. He would come up once a month or so, but we held the classesregularly at least twice a week.RA: What was the philosophy behind the Working People's Art Groups?Was there any ideology?AW: It was an automatic sort of thing. It was for the enhancement ofwhat we call beauty or something that is basic to human life. The drawing

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classes helped people realise this and realise their own abilities. Thepurpose of the Group was to spread the importance of art among themasses. In the classes we.had retired people, middle-aged people, youngstudents who wanted to go to an art college and needed a certain amountof preparatory course. So the classes helped different people in differentways. We never taught anything specific, and most people found theirown way according to their different aptitudes.RA: So what you were doing was not really telling the people who joinedthe Groups what to draw or paint but somehow helping them to realisetheir own potentials as creative human beings.AW: Now you have got it.RA: Tell us something about your life as an agricultural field officer.AW: Think of Guyana at the time. It was a British colony. It was at thattime a boiling cauldron; Guyana coming out of colonial bondage. It wasthe time when the seed of independence began to germinate. At that time Ibecame a cane-farming officer for the colony, acting as an agriculturalsuperintendent for the whole east coast and also as a field officer. In fact, Iwas doing three jobs in the department of agriculture, and at the sametime breaking the rules right left and centre. I was battling with thegovernment for the farmers, and that is how I became a cane-farmingofficer. I became the arbitrator-cum-organiser for sugar cane farmers...

Now I must explain to you all this in some detail- Think of demerarasugar. It was produced in Guyana by Bookers McConnell & Co.; thesame Bookers who are now known in this country for the Booker Prizefor literature. In Guyana they then owned everything, from sugarproduction to shops in the high streets. Sugar was the main produce ofGuyana and the whole economy was dependent on it. And thus Bookerscontrolled everything in the country. They were in fact the representa-tives of Britain in Guyana.

Demerara Sugar and Demerara Rum! You must have heard thesewords many times. About 90% of the demerara sugar came from Bookersown sugar estates, and the remaining 10% was produced by farmers ontheir own small plots adjacent to the estates. The demerara sugarproduced by the farmers was very important because it gave a higherquality to overall demerara sugar production and was essential for theproduction of best quality rum. The farmers knew about it, but they weregetting the rough end of the stick all the time. They were manipulated bythe estates, cheated and exploited. They were always on their own, andthere was nobody to intervene and help the farmers...So, one day we gotthis new post in the department of agriculture, created by some visionarycivil servant who saw the trouble coming because the farmers began torealise their importance and they also knew that they were being cheated.The post of cane-farming officer was created chiefly to maintain normalrelations between the estates and the farmers. You can see the strangedichotomy here!

Now, here you have me as a young agricultural officer trained in sugarproduction and coming into this terrible set up; and put into this complexsituation in which I was given a certain mandate only to smooth outrelations. I was expected to liaise between the farmers and the estates, butalso not to rock the boat. It was like being given a contract as a hit man:you couldn't come back to the government and be defended against thesugar barons. But I was not a stupid person. Politically, I was pretty

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astute for that time. I wasn't a fool. I understood things like social changeand land reforms and all the sins of colonialism. I was not activepolitically though, and up to now I'm not active politically. I have neverbeen on the forefront of fighting for direct revolutionary change.RA: You mean you are not a political activist?AW: Ah, activist! That's a lovely word. But I had strong views about mycountry, about the ideas of independence, about self-respect and, youknow, to have a chance for it to be an entity in the world. I had very verystrong views with the madness of a youth and also had a wild energy.And I did too good a job, because the sugar estates at the time were usingvarious subtle means of controlling and exploiting the farmers. Thefarmers had to come to the estates for chemical manure, and the wholetransport system was built into the sale of farmers' sugar to the estates.Before I took up the job of the cane-farming officer, the farmers hadnobody with ability to tell them what their labour or product was worth.So, I began to check the whole thing; the figures, the yield and whatfarmers were actually getting and so on. I knew I had the rights and Iexercised my rights. This upset the sugar managers and the troublestarted.RA: You mean they were cheating the farmers?AW: Not outrightly. They had developed a system by which farmerswere being cheated all the time. And I suddenly came as a bloody thorn intheir side, demanding correct figures, fair play and all sort of things. Butthe sugar barons had other means of manipulating and controlling thefarmers. For example, they would flood some fields at a wrong time anddestroy a whole year's production; and then they would claim that it wasan accident. They wouldn't flood all the fields around because theyalways needed the farmer's cane. They would pick up only those fieldsfrom where they had some 'trouble'. So, I started paying attention to thesluices and watergates and putting in mud-blinds wherever we hadseepage. The estates didn't like it and frowned upon me to the extent thatthey would not let me use their tractors to dig the blinds. I had to get thegovernment help to do the job. So, it was a war! It was a time of greattension for me, which actually informed and affected my art workbecause I continued painting even during this difficult time. My work wasfairly social realist at the time, which also became therapeutic in all myanxieties.RA: So, there was an organic relationship between what you call 'socialrealism' and the way you were involved with the farmers?AW: Even if I did a landscape it showed the stress and tension of the time.RA: Wasn't this the time when you were sent away to work among anIndian tribe, Warrau, living inside the rain forest of north-west Guyana?This aspect of your life was particularly the focus of a film about you. TheMark of the Hand made by Imruh Caesar. You actually went to visit thetribe again, after forty years, during the making of the film. Could youtell us something about your experiences of living among the Warraupeople and what impact they had on you?AW: It played a major part in my life, in my realisation of self as an artist.Nothing that happened accidently had ever contributed to my art. Butmy contact with the Warrau was a happy accident, which at the time Iconsidered a personal tragedy.. .As I told you before, I was beginning tohave too much trouble with the agricultural department because I started

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fighting openly, and the people in the department thought I wasbecoming a nuisance. I should have been more diplomatic. In the end theygot so fed up that they sent me to work in the jungle. My posting in thejungle was really a punishment for what I was doing. It was like sendingsomeone to Siberia. They said to themselves, 'let us get rid of the bastard'.But they did it in such a way that it looked like a promotion, because theyput me in charge of the experimental agricultural station in the north-westjungle. For me it was either resigning or going. I have always beeninterested in my country, my relationship with its earth and my interest inits ecology. So I went.

My arrival in the jungle was traumatic. I thought I would be lost in itforever, and it took me six months to get used to it. First, I kept to myselfand my work, but then I slowly began to come to terms with the socialenvironment, particularly of the Warrau tribe. Most of these people werealready converted to Christianity and were being used as labourers on theplantation. Although I had a catholic background, I was agnostic. And Ididn't like what the church was doing to them. So I was drawn to theIndian way of life, their artefacts and rituals.RA: You stayed there for two years, and I believe that the Indian way oflife had tremendous impact on you. What kind of relationship did youhave with the Warrau people and did it influence you in your work as anartist?AW: A total relationship! And my language of expression completelychanged. In fact it was there that for the first time I discovered myself asan artist. Before that it was all an amateur activity. It was only after Icame into contact with the Warrau that I knew what I would do with mylife. I have to thank the Warrau people now for my work as an artist. Ican't be more profound than that. My interest in pre-Columbian culturewas intensified as a result of living there. They still kept the old artefactswith them which they used in their rituals.RA: Did they make new artefacts when you were there?AW: Yes, but secretly, because they were afraid of being found out by thepriest. They used beautiful colours in their work, which was totemic, andthe colours were derived from natural substances.RA: Did they use 'fire' in their rituals?AW: Yes, all the time. In all the rituals, four elements were used: fire,water and earth, and the fourth element was variable — it could be woodor any other thing.RA: On your return to the city, Georgetown, you made contact againwith Burrowes and resumed your activities as part of the WorkingPeople's Art Group, as well as continuing your work as an agriculturalofficer with the government. How did you find things on your return?AW: By that time all my intellectual friends had joined People'sProgressive Party (PPP), which was on the forefront of the struggle forindependence. I knew Cheddi Jagan personally and I was very close tohim, and he in turn always interjected his presence into everyday work,so much so that it provided the sugar barons with a colonial excuse toimplicate me with the politics of PPP. I was not even an ordinary memberof the Party. It came out that I was investigated, without me evenknowing about it, for creating farmers' communes on the east coast ofGuyana. The foreign service here thought I was a political activist. But Inever aligned myself with PPP, never attending their meetings or they

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attending farmers' meetings — although the PPP's presence was profoundall over the place. It is true that farmers' associations began to be calledfarmers' communes. Okay, but they were just associations, little brother-hoods where problems could be shared. We didn't have to run to sugarbarons every time we had some problem. But they thought we werebecoming independent, which to some extent was true. We began to getcompensations for cheating or any damage done by the sugar estates. Itwas the time of great political struggle and tension. It was a verydangerous time.RA: Soon after in 1952, when you were twenty six, you found yourself inBritain and since then you have lived here most of the time. What werethe real motives behind your leaving Guyana at that time? Was it anambition as an artist or were there other factors involved?AW: As I told you before, it was the time of great political upheaval. Atthe peak of all that a shooting took place at a sugar estate where elevenpeople died. During this time a friend from the PPP came to see me oneday, and he said: 'listen Aubrey, you will never be a politician; you arenot a politician. You are hardly an agricultural scientist now. You arereally a painter. You have a lot of leave coming (I had not taken much.leave during my government service). So, why don't you go to Europeand paint there. And you must go quickly.' Three months after I had leftGuyana, the whole top leadership of the PPP was in jail.RA: So this friend of yours did a favour to you by asking you to leave.AW: He saved my life! Otherwise my whole life would have taken adifferent direction. I would have been incarcerated along with thepoliticians, which would have been an embarassment to them as well asto me. I'm fairly political, but my politics are very simple, very basic. Youunderstand? Fight for your rights! If you don't have your rights you arenot a human being. It's as simple as that. Protect the underprivileged,protect the people who don't yet know how to fight. But, above all, fightfor your rights.RA: Before you came here you must have had some perception of thissociety. What was that perception? And how did you actually find thissociety when you arrived here?AW: This society! This society was also a society in a drastic change atthat time. It was a postwar society. When I came here I had a ration book.In London there were bomb sites everywhere. The south embankmentwas just getting tidy. It had just come out of the Festival of Britain. Andthe Festival Hall was just finished...I came to a London where in the pubthey would touch a black man for luck. There were not many blackpeople around. I could walk a week without seeing a black brother. Thiswas the London I came to, man! And I realised that I had to know thiscountry, even if I hated it...In the beginning I took many things forgranted, and in some respect it was not bad. In fact, I did it in grand stylebecause I had my salary coming to me from Guyana. It was a lot ofmoney. I was very excited but somehow I didn't feel very comfortable.How could I? I was a young artist then. My whole life was spent in somekind of enquiry: seeing, feeling, looking and finding new things, youknow. And this was not an easy place.

When I came here I entered at the top. I went first to live at HansCrescent, which was then used by the colonial elite — the sons ofMaharajas, the upper middle classes. They all stayed at Hans Crescent

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until they had entrance to Cambridge or Oxford. Hans Crescent at thattime was run by the British Council, but not openly...Most of the time wewatched television. The television was just in its infancy at the time andthe place used to be crowded all the time, in spite of the facts that we wereallowed only two guests...Sometimes we were invited to stately homes:lord so-and-so and lady so-and-so would entertain guests from HansCrescent on weekends. We went to many stately homes and we wereoften entertained with tea and biscuits, and we sometimes existed onthat. It was a top level British brainwashing and indoctrination; becauseafter living like this for a few months you would begin to despise yourown people back home, man! Your letters would change. It was a verysubtle kind of thing. They were actually making up with colonial friendsat that time, and only now I can see that with hindsight. Think of awide-open colonial mind! No wonder mortalities were so high! Thinkof the number of brothers that got lost inside that trap, that earlycolonial trap called Hans Crescent. I think that we lost a lot of leaders.But Hans Crescent was only one colonial institution. There must havebeen places like this all over the country.

I somehow always felt uncomfortable. I couldn't put my finger on whatwas wrong. It was an instinctive gut feeling that something was wrong.Little hints and signs were there: the smiling people from the nobility; thecolonial cronies coming up to you and telling you that they knew moreabout your country than you knew yourself.. .By this time I had left HansCrescent and was living among the broken down nobility in ArtileryMansions in Victoria Street. We called it, rather irreverently, 'theMausoleum'. You know why we called it 'the Mausoleum'? Because it wasthere where the cronies from the House of Lords went to die. Most of thepeople I met there are now dead and gone. I mean you can't mentionnames, but they were weird, weird cats, man!RA: At this time you went around travelling in the country. You alsowent to Europe; and in Paris you met Albert Camus whom you found tobe very friendly. He took you to see Picasso. Could you tell us somethingabout this meeting with Picasso?AW: There was nothing special about meeting Picasso. It was a meetinglike many others, except that meeting Picasso was a bigdisappointment. It was a disappointment for stupid little things: Ididn't like how he looked; I didn't like how he behaved. I neverthought I would not like people like that. But the total of the wholething is that I did not like Picasso. He was just an ordinary past-middle-aged man. I remember the very first comment he made when we met.He said that I had a very fine African head and he would like me topose for him. And I felt terrible. In spite of the fact that I was introducedto him as an artist, he did not think of me as another artist. He thoughtof me only as something he could use for his own work.RA: On your return to London, you joined St. Martin's School of Art.How long did you stay there?AW: About two and a half years, maybe three. But, you know, after thesecond year I didn't sign in. I just went there and worked all day bymyself. I told them that I didn't want the diploma. I just wanted to usemodels, use the general facilities, cheap paint and material etc. I also hadmy first exhibition at the Archer Gallery while I was still at St. Martin's,inspite of the fact that in those days it was forbidden for a grant-receiving

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?••" ' ' i

Tumatu Man (Sleeping Rocks) 1959

student to have an individual show in a commercial gallery.RA: After you left St. Martin's you did many jobs for living, such asworking in factories, doing dish washing in cafes, etc. It was your wife,Eve, who persuaded you to give up these jobs and concentrate fully onyour work as an artist. Could you say something about this aspect ofyour life?AW: Yes, Eve has been supportive all along.RA: Your first public showing was at the Archer Gallery in 1954, whichintroduced you to the art world. How was the general art scene like atthat time?AW: It was rich, man! No doubt. Socially, it was no problem. We allwent around to gallery openings and to the pubs. People like DylanThomas and John Minton were around. And it was fun!RA: Your first success came with your show at the New Vision Centre in1958, in which I believe you sold almost everything. How was your workreceived by art critics?

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AW: Oh, very well. I don't know if you remember Eric Newton. He wasan important art critic, and I have still kept clippings of his writing aboutme. I was surprised at the depth of his knowledge and understanding ofmy work, in the sense that he understood from where my work wascoming. Critics in general at that time were very complimentary andhelpful.RA: Looking back now, how do you feel about your first success aboutthirty years ago? You must have then built a lot of hope for the future.AW: Man! Well, I was so naive in those days. I thought it was it. It wasthe life of the artist. I thought I made it. Following that show I had aboutsix or seven more shows in that year in various places. But then, after twoyears, whenever I had a show it was not received in the same manner. Allmy shows were ignored, and I felt terrible. I began to ask myself what waswrong with me, what was wrong with my work. For the next five years Iwas in a terrible confusion. You know, I thought I had hit the level whichwould see me through both economically and respectably as a recognisedartist in the British community. At that time I was still very respectful tothe British — not that respectful now. Now I know more and understandmore. But in those days it was the mother country, you know; I felt I wasprivileged to be in Britain and doing my art in the mother country.RA: Did you feel that you were British at that time?AW: Not British! I could never feel British. A black man can't be British!How can black man feel British? No, I don't feel British. In those days Idid feel privileged to be here, though.RA: You did once say that subsequently you felt that there was nointellectual space in Britain in which you could place yourself, and youfelt terribly isolated from the British art scene...AW: It was when I really started to think. In the beginning I suppose I wasa novelty, but when the novelty began to wear off and I was being nicelyput in my place I started to realise my "blackness'. You must rememberthat the emotional, even spiritual, impact of coming to this country wastraumatic. But then one did not see everything in those days. One hadhope even when things were difficult.

In the beginning there were so many things happening. I lived most ofthe time in museums, looking at the paintings which I had seen only inreproductions. A day was never long enough! I did not then have the timeto assess my position in this country. I did not have the time to realise thatI was a little black boy from the colonies. I did not at that time think howthe British really felt about black foreigners as compared to whiteforeigners...But when it really started to hit me, my sensitivity began togrow or become more manifest in my life from day to day and I started tothink all the time about my self-respect to which I had not somehow paidmuch attention in the past. I began to sus my position in this society. Itwas a terrible time and I began to feel terribly isolated, physically andintellectually.RA: Wasn't it the time when you joined the Caribbean Artists Move-ment?AW: Yes, but in the beginning CAM wasn't a movement. It was just agathering together of brothers (and sisters?) involved in creative activi-ties, to exchange ideas and to give each other company. But then thosewho were more active intellectually turned it into an organised entity, aplatform. In fact it was badly needed then. CAM was not an exclusive or

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restrictive club. We had everybody involved in it — it was not exclusivelyblack. We were of course predominantly black, coming from the coloniesor ex-colonies, but at that time not everybody used this word. It's onlynow that we know that people from the Indian Subcontinent are alsoblack people. Thank heaven for the racism of this country — it madeIndians discover that they are also black! In those days an Indian personwas an Indian, not a black person. He would be insulted if somebodycalled him black.

CAM was very important at the time. It helped create an intellectualatmosphere for everybody to be creative and relate to each other. It wassomething from which even the native British benefitted. CAM was animportant part of the British intellectual life, but since it was predomi-nantly of Caribbean people it was categorised, isolated and eventuallydestroyed. And it was the BBC which played a major role in itsdestruction, by isolating black intellectuals and giving them separateexposure.

Visual Idea 1963

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We needed an identity; we needed something to which our painters,musicians, writers, etc. could relate to, but we did not think of CAM assomething operating only here. When a lot of us returned to theCaribbean CAM really flourished there. In fact most of the importantcontributions to our journal came from Jamaica, although we had peoplecontributing to it from all over the world. As an international platformCAM was very important because it was how we came to know what washappening in the rest of the Commonwealth. It was through CAM that Imet many artists from Africa, from India and from many parts of theworld.

RA: Now I want to get back to the '50s. When you began to exhibit inLondon, were you still doing figurative work?AW: I never abandoned figurative work.RA: Okay, when did you move to what began to be called abstract work?AW: I stay on with figurative work whenever I want to. I would say that Idid concentrate intensely on abstraction for about ten years, at the time ofNew Vision Centre.RA: You were somehow part of those artists who in the late '50s and early'60s were associated with New Vision Centre, and the main concern of thegallery was with the promotion of international abstract art. Theimportance of this position can only be understood in the light oftraditional English hostility towards anything which is not figurative (ahangup from European Realism), notwithstanding the different positionof some people (such as John Berger) who saw some kind of figurationas essential to 'revolutionary' art. I'm not suggesting that your work ofthat period — and its continuation right into the Shostakovich series thatyou completed in the early '80s — should be read only as 'abstract'. But Ibelieve you started doing 'abstract' work in London, which was a shiftfrom the kind of work you were doing when you were in Guyana. Howdid this change take place and when?AW: Oh, it was at the time of the exhibition in London of GermanExpressionism. It was around the mid-1950s. Also then AmericanAbstract Expressionism was known. We had a great regard for theAmerican work, man! Pollock was everything. Pollock was our god! Youunderstand? All those artists — Kline, Newman, Rothko, De Kooning...!They were all great! But for me the most important was Gorky. He fittedin some way with my own perception which was basically informed bypre-Columbian Indian iconography of Guyana.

When I left my country to come here it was about two years after I hadcome back from living with the Warrau tribe. So I came here alreadyloaded with ideas, how to put all those ideas into my expression. But thenI realised that what I was facing here was a European desert. It was adesert because the museums that I went to were just big monuments. AndI was not impressed with the kind of work being done in London at thattime. It was nice to see studios and see how other artists worked, becausein my own country if you had a little area you could call a studio youwould be bloody lucky...

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Warrau (I) 1972

RA: So what you are saying is that the ideas were already there beforeyou came here and those ideas came from your fascination withpre-Columbian art...AW: No, no, no. Not fascination! Fascination sounds very superficial.The core of my activity is in my interest in pre-Columbian culture and inmy involvement with pre-Columbian artefacts...RA: And somehow the German Expressionism exhibition in Londonhelped you discover or find a form or methodology to express those ideas.AW: Perhaps the German exhibition was a starting point. But I wasalways interested in German Expressionism, as I came face to face with itduring my travels in Europe.RA: Didn't you say that you were also influenced by American AbstractExpressionism?AW: Greatly influenced, I said that at the time. Greatly influenced!RA: And yet you say that the core of your work is in your interest in

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pre-Columbian art. How would you explain the meeting point of thesetwo different sources, because it is not very evident in the work youbegan in the '50s?AW: It's not something I can explain in words. That's why I paint. If Icould express it in words I would write and I would write lucidly...RA: People can clearly see the connection with Abstract Expressionism,although I personally believe that your work has little to do with it. Mostof your work appears to be 'abstract', and that's how your work hasalways been seen and written about — as far as I know. What is not clearis what you call the pre-Columbian core of your work. What is this core?Is it iconographic, formal or conceptual? Where is it and how is itexpressed?AW: Listen, it is not my position to explain everything. If I were to usewords I wouldn't be an artist...All my life I have been involved withmystery. Now mystery is a very bad word, especially in this environ-ment. It connotes hocus-pocus occult, witchcraft, etc. And that's notwhat I'm talking about. For me pre-Columbian culture is still full ofmystery. It's a no-man's land even to the scientists. There are things inMaya civilisation which are not yet clear to us. They can't be explainedrationally. And that's what I mean by mystery. I'm not ashamed of usingthis mystery in my work.RA: I'm not denying the element of mystery in your work. And I'm notagainst mystery. But if a work remains shrouded in mystery, if it remainswithout being decoded, then it has no function as a medium of expressionor communication. There has to be a clue, even if it is a difficult clue,which can help penetrate this mystery, and which can help the audienceunderstand the work. I admit your work is not simple. It's not transpa-rent. It doesn't have to be. It's the complexity of your work which makesit significant; and that's why I'm interested in your work. But I'm curiousto know what you mean by the pre-Columbian core of your work.AW: In my little way I'm trying to go as far back as possible in orderreally to understand that part of my own history...RA: Yes, that may be your intention, Aubrey. That may be your desire..AW: Desire! But not intention.RA: Maybe it is your desire to go back five hundred or thousand yearsand relate yourself to that period in human history what we callpre-Columbian civilisations. Maybe it is your desire to identify yourselfwith a specific period in human history and pick the fragments of thathistory and give them some expression in the context of our own time. Buthow is this desire actually expressed in your work and what is itssignificance today?AW: I see parallels. And I see repetitions.RA: Let me refer to a concrete example: your painting called Guyana,which won the first prize in the 'Commonwealth Abstract Art Exhibi-tion', held in London in 1963. How would you explain that painting interms of what we are now talking about?AW: Minimally. Minimally. It's more of a comment on my country inwhich I was brought up and I still had the memory of the profoundexperiences I had there; and the word 'Guyana' was a convenient word. Itcomes out of my interest in geology and topography, particularly ofGuyanese landscape — the earth, the animals, water, and so on, and Ifound it easy to name it Guyana. It does rather have expressionistic

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rendering, but if you could put an X-ray on it you will see the heavydrawing coming out of it. The painting is clinically constructed before itcomes up with that apparent freedom. It has to be like this or else you endup with chaos.RA: But doesn't the work belong to the period which was called AbstractExpressionism?AW: Why are you so concerned about labelling my work or compart-mentalising it?RA: I'm not compartmentalising your work. Not at all. You haveyourself accepted that you have been influenced by Abstract Expression-ism...AW: I also admit that I'm influenced by pre-Columbian artefacts. AndI'm going to continue to go on being influenced by all sorts of things.RA: I accept that. I have myself never said that your work is AbstractExpressionistic. On the contrary, I believe that it is important to gobeyond Abstract Expressionism in order to understand your work. At

Realm of the Sun 1982

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first glance some of your work may appear to be 'abstract' or 'abstractexpressionistic', and therefore some people may read your work this way.But to me the influence of Abstract Expressionism is superficial, it's only acamouflage. It's a beautiful camouflage beyond or within which there issomething more...AW: I hope so. I hope so.RA: There are specific shapes and forms which you have consistantlyused in your work. These shapes and forms might have been derivedfrom pre-Columbian artefacts, but their symbolic meaning is not veryclear. They become significant only when one realises their fragmentarynature, the way they float in space as if they have been thrown outinto it with a big explosion. Your use of colours, brush strokes, andthe way the whole thing is constructed, all add up to this realisation;as well as create a style which is peculiarly yours. But we must seeif there is anything more beyond an individual style.

In most of your work, particularly that which is often described as'abstract', there is frequently a centre surrounding by glowing, out-of-focus colours which often move upward. The rest of the canvas is filledwith what appears to be broken or burnt pieces of wood, mixed withfragments of things which are not easily recognisable. But, these are thekind of things one would see when there is a fire or a destruction takingplace due to fire. Am I right then in seeing the existence of 'fire' in yourwork, particularly as an icon used in various ways to signify multiplicityof meaning? This may be the central clue not only to the understanding ofyour insistence that the work is informed by your interest in pre-Columbian culture but also its significance as a modern work of art.AW: Good. Good. Very perceptive.RA: I think your discomfort with the European presence in your work isunderstandable. It is part of our desires to get out of the colonial past, andyet we remain caught in its continuing legacy producing new forms ofdomination. We can't get rid of it even when we want to. It's a situationwhich prevents us being what we want to be. The question of identityoften crops up in this situation. Are you also concerned with thisquestion?AW:It's more than just a question of identity. The human predicamentin the postcolonial envionment is so profound that it is a doublenegative. One can feel a private tragedy of being manacled, and stillwith a bandage around your mouth. And outside oneself there is thiswhole colossal problem of social and ecological nature. In this respectI think that the postcolonial artist is the true voice of the world. Buthe often not only fails to recognise this, he is unable in nearly everycase to put on the mantle. Even if we put on the mantle, theestablishment has the means of still making us fail...Only the Mandelasare still their true selves. But the day Mandela is let out, he is doomed.We have this incongruity. You see, what I mean.RA: But that does not mean to say that we should give up the struggle.AW: No, the struggle is part of our lives. To breath, to drink water youhave to struggle. So it is already part of our lives. It is not something wetake on. With our inheritance of chaos we have no choice.RA: You mean the colonial inheritance.AW: Yes. Within this inherited chaos, we still have to work inside theenvironment of the home ground of the overlords. So, we automatically

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Maya Confrontation (II) 1982

find ourselves fighting on two fronts: fighting against the complicity ofour own people and fighting the overlords at the same time. If this is not aplan for failure, then I don't know what it is. And yet we have to continuewith the struggle. We are saying to the establishment here in Britain: thisis what you have ignored. This is what you have purposefully tricked ourpeople, into not realising what we have achieved in this country. And atthe same time I say to our people: this is what you had all the bloody timeand what the fuck did you do about it? I'm not here only talking aboutmyself and my work. Think of all those artists who came from Africa,from Asia and from the Caribbean. They all thought this was theirmother country. What happened to them? But I have not lost hope. Thisis why I find myself keeping on painting...Now, you understandsomething about my work and you know there is not much romanceinvolved in it. I don't allow the economic factor to affect my work. And Idon't subscribe to the isolation of the artist and the cult of the artist'ssuffering — like the artist who is drunk all the time. Never, never in mylife have I allowed these concepts to enter into my life. My life now is agrowing realisation of attempting the impossible; and yet I do it everyday. The economic deprivation is no longer a shame or embarassment.It's a great source of justified anger, man! I can say I have done somethingsignificant for which I deserve recognition. Like Othello, I can say I have

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done the State some service and I demand some payment.RA: I want to get back to the question of identity, if you don't mind. Itlooked like the question of identity was not very crucial to you. It wasperhaps not the cause in creating a shift in your work, from what hasbeen described as 'abstract' to your recent work in which you haveexplicitly used iconographic material from pre-Columbian cultures...AW: There has been no shift. It's only an emphasis, a return to theemphasis of what I have always considered fundamental to my work.RA: Okay, I accept it was a shift in emphasis.AW: It happened because I said to myself: what the fuck are you hiding?What are you doing, man? Why don't you put the damn thing downthere? Why are you dressing it up?RA: But why the Maya or Aztec? Why not Africa?AW: Because this is my field of study. This is my subject. Now let me tellyou something about the Maya. Let me tell you something vital about theMaya...RA: No, no. You don't have to go into all this. The point I'm raising isdifferent...AW: It's very crucial what I'm saying. Why the Maya! like those peoplewho say to me, why Shostakovich! And I have to answer. I have all thefive races inside me, but the dominant one is West African — Ghanian orNigerian. Flowing through me are all these things, but the question is to

Chato Presence 1982

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which pole I give my identity direction. I have to give it to Africa, becausethat's the predominant part of me. My history is the black history, by'black' I mean those who have been persecuted as slaves: fifty millions inthe middle passage that nobody bloody well talks about. We hear ofholocausts and we hear of six millions and we hear this and that, but whotalks about fifty millions. You know, around fifty millions were throwninto the middle of the Atlantic. Don't worry about that odd millionskilled on the plantations. That is my black history...But when aGuyanese or a Jamaican puts on that dashiki or a fez and says 'I'mAfrican', he is synthetic. He is so synthetic, it isn't true. You understand?It's fake. Africaness is put on with the dashiki and it is taken off with thedashiki...RA: There is nothing wrong with 'synthetic' identity. And it is alsounderstandable why so many people turn to their countries of origin forroots and identities. The problem with this kind of identity is that one getstrapped in what I call 'ethnicity . Okay, you are not putting on an Africandashiki. But it can be said that you are putting on a pre-Columbiandashiki. How would you answer to that?AW: I don't have to answer to that. What else have I got? I have come outof South American earth, South American history and South Americanhappening. I have drunk that water and I have eaten out of that earth.No, I'm just being myself. But nobody will accept that.Not even you: youquestion it, you see. But there is no other driving force in my art. Theother things are ancillary to the burning urge inside here, to drawparallels between the Maya mistakes and what I find happening in themodern humanity.RA: I didn't mean to say that you were putting on a dashiki. Not at all.For me your use of pre-Columbian iconography is profoundly significant.I wanted to disentangle this from the question of identity, both racial andcultural. There are complex layers of metaphors but they are not easy toseparate...AW: So you agree with the use of...RA: Yes.AW: No, the Maya metaphor. Especially the Maya metaphor, when I saywe are involved in the repetition of the Maya mistakes.RA: It's not a question of my agreement or disagreement. The choice ofmetaphor is yours, and its significance should come out from the readingof the work... I think we can learn things from past history. If in the pastwe have made mistakes as human beings, it would be stupid to repeatthem. What I'm interested in here is to find out how these things arearticulated in your work and what the significance is of your work for ustoday.AW: But what I'm saying here is that it's too late. Even if you try to learntoday, it's too late.RA: But then what is the point of all this?AW: Now listen. Here is what I see when I say we are involved in makingthe Maya mistakes. The Maya civilisation could not keep up with itstechnology, and the technology took control of the environment anddestroyed it. We are doing the same thing today. We are fast runningbehind our technology. Now my work is a synthesis of these two things, amodern consciousness that incorporates our Maya past and also con-siders our human future.

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RA: I can see that your work alludes to some kind of destruction, evenwhen it apparently looks very sensuous and beautiful. This was some-thing I was hinting at when I pointed out the existence of fire in yourwork. Fire is something which is very beautiful to look at. It is warm andit's the fundamental source of energy. But it's also destructive andsignifies destruction. Your work has this duality. This is something whichwas lacking in Abstract Expressionism...AW: Not even Pollock? You won't even give Pollock that?RA: No, I don't think so. Pollock had nothing to do with destruction.AW: Not even Matta?RA: Oh, yes, Matta is different. I was actually going to ask you if there isany relationship of your work with Matta. I mean in formal terms. I askthis question because some of your work does sometimes remind one ofMatta, though superficially. And I know you have been interested inMatta's work.AW: I have always found Matta in common terms. A big brother! Wewere both suffering from the effects of the same virus, and I feltcomfortable with the work of Matta. But I didn't really see an originalMatta until he showed his work in London in the Fifties.RA: What interested you in Matta's work?AW: I think it was a colonial thing. Maybe not colonial; it was somethingcoming from South America. If you can equate it with German Angst, Idon't know. I will give that to you.RA: I don't think there is German Angst in Matta's work.AW: No, no, no; if you can equate it? I'm not talking about GermanAngst in Matta. I'm talking about the thing that I have in my work aswell, the fire in the belly: this anxiety. It's a South American thing. I feelit.RA: I think you have used the word 'anxiety' before in relation to yourown work. Now you are talking about this anxiety in relation to Matta.You are also saying that this is very specific to Latin America.AW: It's the smell of old blood. I think so. It's the smell of the presence ofthe conquistadors. It's the smell of a loss, and a replacement of lesser thanwhat was destroyed. It's a quality coming out of forced change, adisplacement of identity. Violation and yet new growth asserting itself,but never profoundly, never being able to overcome what it's up against.It's a whole lot of things. It's a big galaxy of human consciousness.RA: It has been suggested by some critics that Matta's vision isapocalyptic, which is to do with our modern industrial and technologicalworld. Sometimes I find it too obvious in Matta. Your own work issomehow more difficult to read in this manner, although I think you havea similar vision. How do we relate this apocalyptic vision in your work toour fear of the destruction of our own present world, the earth.AW: Good, good. I give you that. It's coming into the technologicalworld, rapidly, and more and more. If there is any change in my recentwork it's because of my preoccupation with parallel situations in humanhistory; the parallel between the dynamic of early human positions andthe incongruity of our modern technological age. There is a strangedichotomy because the separation between these positions is slightlyfanciful and romantic. However, at the core of my work is the informa-tion which is pragmatic... You will see all sort of things in my work:water, fire, debris — physical and terrestrial, bones of dismembered

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Sun Hieroglyph 1983

skeletons, fragments of things and so on. There are burning structuresand flying ashes as part of cataclysmic explosions. You will see thingsdecaying. There is also ever present something that I can't get rid of,because of my years of preoccupation with volcanoes, with magnavolcanic erruptions, molten rocks, lava, etc. I'm still interested inastronomy and cosmology. All these things are there.RA: There is no reason to deny any of these things you have talked about.But in the end these things become significant only when they have to dowith what you yourself call your anxiety, and this anxiety is about livingin the modern world. You are not talking about the destruction ofcosmos. You are talking about this earth and what is happening on it atthe present time... The anxiety you talk about is the anxiety about thedestruction on earth, the destruction of human civilisation. You have saidin one of the catalogues of your exhibitions and I quote here: 'a peoplewho produced a technology and cosmology from which we are stilllearning; these people vanished in a very short span of time..., exactly theposition we found ourself in today'. You were referring to the Mayacivilisation. However what I find interesting and puzzling in your work isthe strong sensuous element, the beautiful sensuous colours whichsomehow camouflage the full impact of the horrors of the colossal

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destruction you perceive. Are you suggesting by this that we have thecapability to correct the whole thing?AW: I don't see it that way...RA: Are you then a pessimist?AW: If you want to give it a word. I feel I'm an actualist rather than apessimist.RA: Let us imagine a burning house, with flying debris all over the place.If we take colour photographs of the various parts of this buring house,some of the photographs might look like some of your own paintings. Ifind this connection between your work — particularly the one which isoften described as 'abstract' — and photography very interesting. In someof your work colours look like out-of-focus colours in photography,which to me imply a 'distance'. You need to take a distance whilewatching a burning fire. However, it appears that you are somehowattracted to this burning house, in a way that takes pleasure fromwatching its destruction. This comes out from the way the sensuousaspect of the whole thing is enhanced by beautiful glowing colours.AW: Now you must be careful. It's not pleasure. It's excitement.Excitement is not pleasure. It's a tragic excitement.RA: Whose house is on fire?AW: How could you ask this question when we don't own anything in thefirst place. So whose house? The question is irrelevent.RA: Let me put this differently. I'm sorry if I'm being persistent. Yourwork is complex: it appears to have a lot of what you yourself callincongruity. It is full of paradoxes. What I'm trying here is to try todisentangle some of them. So, please bear with me. In your recent work,what you call the Olmec-Maya series, you have recreated characters frompre-Columbian civilisations, and you have re-presented these charactersby superimposing them upon or in conjunction with the images ofburning and destruction. This reminds me of burning Rome beingwatched by Nero. Who is Nero here? Are we all implicated here? Are yousaying that we are all watching a destruction and doing nothing? In fact,from the enhanced sensuous aspect of the work it appears that we areinvolved in taking a narcissistic pleasure in this destruction.AW: I feel that we are waiting for the big bang, racing towards the deathwith galloping speed... The analogy with Rome is a weak one, but it'strue. I don't think that the loss of Rome was such a big thing.RA: My reference to Rome was only to point to what appears to be anaspect of celebration in your work.AW: Oh, oh!RA: Why is the work so beautiful, decoratively beautiful? That's what Imean by the paradox...AW: Oh, it's very Zen. It's yin & yang! Let us look at it as a real thing. Tome it is a real thing. It's something you can hold, you can come to gripswith. The dynamics in my work are automatic. I have no control overthem. But I have some control on expression. If you see many negativefacts, they are predominantly with me. They are on the top of myconsciousness. This anxiety is growing everyday. Now, if at the sametime you see beauty, it is the beauty of fire, it's the beauty of a stormat sea, it's the beauty of lightning.. .It's the beauty which is verydangerous, because it's the beauty of things which are out of yourcontrol. This is the paradox; this is the incongruity. You can't parcel

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it away, and put it in a safe category.RA: What do you expect from the audience when they look at your work?AW: Anything. Negative or positive. To hate my work or to love it. Tobe excited by the work. But to understand, that's different. Understand-ing incorporates interpretations, identity, examinations, isolation anddescription of all sort of things...RA: The understanding bit is not easy. I know. It took me a long timebefore I was able to pick up the bits and pieces. My first response to yourwork was an excitement. It was in 1971, when you showed your work atthe Camden Arts Centre. My first impression was that it was an originalwork, which at the same time was beautiful — although this 'expressionis-tic' thing is not my cup of tea. But I don't allow such things to interfere inmy appreciation and understanding of other artists' work. I now want totalk to you something that I felt then, about which I did talk to yousometime later (perhaps in a pub), but you were not interested. You justshrugged your shoulders.

One of the things which I felt then, in 1971, was that the size of yourcanvas was not large enough; as a result of which things were com-pressed. They wanted to explode, but somehow they couldn't within asmall space. In a strange way the work contained repressed energy, andsomehow you were keeping the lid on.

Maya Sun (III) 1984

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AW: I'm glad you have used the word 'felt'. Yes, it was like a prison, like adream. But it was also due to economic reasons. Eventually I had to comeout off the small canvas.RA: I know you have been using large canvases all the time, and you havealso done large scale mural works — in Guyana, America, Canada,Jamaica... But it seems that the real explosion came with your work thatwas inspired by Shostakovich's music. Was this because of the largecanvases you have used in this series or was it the music?AW: It's news to me that you see a great liberation in my work with theShostakovich series. I never thought of it that way. I thought my workhad become more free slowly and slowly without the big jump you aretalking about. I admit that the Shostakovich series was a big break-through for me, but it was not the breakthrough. I feel that thedevelopment of my work has been slower; there has been nothingsudden. It has been a growing thing all the time. And I hope it will go onthis way all the time, even if I find myself in my nineties... My work onthe music of Shostakovich was not due to my discovery of something newin Shostakovich's music. It was more a realisation of common concernsand perceptions in our work. I always found myself in sympathy with hisvision, which became a source of inspiration for me. Shostakovich'smusic did not give me a new direction; and the basis of my work hasalways remained my interest in pre-Columbian culture.RA: Is there anything apocalyptic in Shostakovich?AW: There is; there is a great apocalypse in Shostakovich, all the time.That is why I say, there are parallel anxieties involved in both of ourwork.RA: So, it was the meeting of two similar minds. Actually, I didn't myselfthink that there was anything new in your Shostakovich series, exceptthat the work had become bigger and much more confident. The size ofthe canvas looks the right size, and what I called the repressed energy hasfully exploded. One can now see the disintegrating and fragmentingstructures surrounded by fire more clearly.AW: When I was doing the series, which took me ten years to finish, I wasin a wild unknown world of sound. I have carried on with large canvasesin my Olmec-Maya series, which is the recent work you have seen, but Istill feel restricted by the size. I feel I would have done better with biggercanvases. I don't know where I will be going from here. I mighteventually need a whole large wall to paint. Inside me I have always feltmyself a muralist. I feel that my creative revolution will come in muralpainting. This yearning for bigger space may be a lack of control, but I'mnot worrying too much about it.RA: One of the points I made earlier was that the relationship of yourearlier work with pre-Columbian culture was not clear. At least I didn'tfirst see it. I now know that you have consistently used 'fire' as a symbolicicon from that culture, and this may partly be due to your stay with theWarrau tribe before you came here. We also know that 'fire' was animportant part of pre-Columbian mythology — such as the 'Sun God'. Inyour recent work, the Olmec-Maya series, this relationship is much moredirect. If this emphasis on your relationship with pre-Columbian cultureis also to do with a need for cultural identity, why was this not soimportant in your earlier work?AW: There has always been this relationship.

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Moon Sign 1984

RA: But somehow it was not expressed so explicitly, as in the recentwork.AW: Now, you have stumbled on the edges of the crux of the real matter.The crux of the matter is that inherent in my work since I was a boy hasbeen the human predicament, specifically with regard to the Guyanesesituation. The Guyanese people who in their strange way have been sortof living in the emerging Third World, and wherever you go you will findthem part of the struggle. What I'm now talking about in the case of theGuyanese is that this Guyanese diaspora is active in the arrowhead ofchange in strange countries they find themselves in...RA: Yes, you will find them all over the world. Isn't that because inGuyana itself they cannot realise their full creative potential?AW: All right. Good question, very good question. But when you start tothink of it you will find that this is really a Third World incongruity. It'spart of the continuing colonial syndrome. Do you see what I'm drivingat?RA: Yes.AW: Mainly due to their own efforts and with very little bloodshed theyhave the country back, and now the problem is in their laps. They nowhave the problem of identity. They also have the problem of isolation,purpose of existence and so on. A high percentage of inheritance we have

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is from the colonial landlords. In other words, what we have inherited ischaos. You know, it is convenient to be handed back what was originallyyours but only after the life blood has been squeezed out of it. You havebeen given back the garbage and you are being held up to the world asbeing incapable and useless, a drain upon other people and so on. Youhave this terrible tragic incongruity, and then the world — including yourown people — is demanding from you a profound identity and dignity.Added to this is the feeling of guilt for allowing yourself to be put into thatsituation in the first place, because we have to bear some responsibility.We can cry out that we were badly done by, but at some point it wouldhave been better to have been dead than to have survived out of thatnastiness. If I were now in South Africa I would go against the gun. It'sbetter to be dead than to be a non-entity on your own earth, you know...These are tragic things. So, if you accuse me of the tragic and pessimisticin my work, it's being fed by the recognition of all these things. My workis sometimes pessimistic. I can't help it.RA: I'm not accusing you of pessimism or anything else. I have beentrying to point out various things in your work, which I think are thedynamics of the work.AW: You have seen, in the film, what a beautiful country Guyana is. Youknow, it has been raped. But not completely — it's still beautiful. Now allthe faults are with us, with humanity.RA: I agree with your explanation, Aubrey; why there are tragic andpessimistic aspects in your work. Why the things are in a state of breakingup, fragmentation, and why things are on fire. It's very much to do withthe post-colonial situation and the diaspora it has created for so manypeople, like us who cannot stay at home and identify with the system thathas been forced upon us and under which it is not possible to realise one'screative potentials.AW: In this game you could be killed, just maintaining yourself and yourdignity. Survival then becomes a very important thing.RA: Okay, that means there is nothing mystical or mysterious in yourwork. Your work relates to the concrete human situation and a particularperiod in our own history. However you haven't fully answered myearlier question: why did the question of identity became so importantonly in the recent work?AW: I'm only trying to recognise the problem here. It can't be isolated,from other things. I have purposefully made a step backward. Oh, I cansee you don't sympathise with this! This is very difficult and I have to bevery careful. I should be very emotional about the whole thing, but I haveto be careful. Now listen, about ten years ago I suddenly realised that Iwas only making paintings. It became hard, you know, realising that onewas in danger of making paintings, like making wall furniture, makingthings career-wise, making things out of ego and hiding it with borrowedplumes. You know, hiding it with a gloss of that borrowed Germanicmannerism, being skillful out of what you had learnt, and not telling thereal story and not being honest with yourself. I said to myself, 'why areyou doing this?' So, I drastically decided: 'ah, what the hell! I will go rightback so that my work is no longer recognisable. I will go right back anddo figuration in painting, rendering into it the symbolic artefacts of myown past culture.' One could go into an old barrel and pull out things,dress them up and present them under different aspects. But one can't just

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do that, if one is a child of one's own time. This big jump, this wonderfulartistic jump, I know that it's not total. It's not total because I had to denymany things to do this, but I have come out of it with something which isthe best of both worlds.

I came out of it and I stand where I am now. It's a revitalisationbecause I'm feeling assertive and knowing more of where I am now,and where I am now is a bigger total than where I was before. It'sthe biggest total I have had so far, because it incorporates my manyinterests in life — astronomy, topography, geology, etc. as well as thevarious happenings in my life, my interest in modern technology and thechange it is creating, the anxieties and tragedies of our time. I know thatthe sea now is 38% polluted. We live off the sea and we can't now turn theclock back. It's getting worse everyday. Our resources of oxygen areshrinking, and it can't be reproduced. We have now also punctured thelast source of oxygen which is the South American Selvas by building thatstupid road through the Amazonas. We have done colossal ecologicaldamage: turtles are laying their eggs in the sea, whales are beachingthemselves everywhere. Pollution is beyond our ability to reverse.Cosmic rays bombardment is growing and we have no shield against itsharmful effects; so leukemia will be like the common cold. Already wehave respirators in the biggest cities of the world. And we are onlywaiting to see the first one put down here: push in 25p and you get tenbreaths of pure oxygen. We are seeing the terrible catastrophies ofman-made diseases. What more do you want? When the AIDS countbecomes 50% the next step would be total. All these anxieties inform mywork all the time. That's my living. Why am I then putting colours ontosurfaces and saying this is important? It's only important what it makespeople realise from it. This is why it's also my anger to be stratified as anartist in this society. Why my work is not seen in important places? Apainting which is faced against the wall, is a dead painting. It might aswell not exist. And I feel a shame, because if I want my paintings seen Ishould have the nerve to put them up against the pavement for peoplewalking along to see them.RA: So, you wanted to make your anxiety, your fear and anger, moreexplicit and more direct, and in order to do that you found it necessary touse a metaphor from the destruction of a past civilisation. It was notmerely the question of search for cultural identity, but the search for anidentity which has very much been part of the whole creative process.You have used images, iconographically, which can be historicallyrelated to a Guyanese person. But what is more important, as far as I'mconcerned, this relationship is not pre-determined nor is it taken forgranted. And that is why there are so many different things in your work,and the significance of the work does not come out of only reading theimages in terms of a specific iconography — Maya or whatever. There isan important paradox involved in the way two different traditions arejuxtaposed, but at the same time there is also a parody involved here: as ifMaya gods have resurrected themselves in order to witness the destruc-tion of our modern civilisation. Are they now taking revenge on us?Anyway, would you have used iconography from European traditions?AW: That would have been borrowing. I'm not borrowing when I goback to pre-Columbian artefacts. However, the images are altered in aEuropean way. They are Europeanised. In other words, they are lying

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gracefully.RA: Why do you say that the images are altered in a European way?AW: They are glossed over with European angst, European psychology,European everything, because I'm still a captured individual.RA: Yes, but we can't escape from not being part of our time, not beingpart of the dominant culture — which is Western culture. So, you can'treally say: 'okay, I will turn my back to everything that is European andproduce something which has nothing to do with it'. I don't think this ispossible.AW: Well, we use Western material. I can't go back to grinding pigmentsand using fats. It would be stupid. You have to use modern material.RA: But, Aubrey, I don't see anything wrong with the Europeanconnection. It's not inauthentic. And I don't see that there is anycompromise in terms of the work being related to Western culturewhatsoever.AW: You mean the Western presence is not there?RA: There is a European presence, of course.AW: There is. I can't get rid of it.RA: You don't have to. The significance of your work is in fact in theinterrelationship between the European presence and what you call partof your own cultural history. It's a critical relationship.AW: I'm not interested in the European adherence. I'm not interested. Ipay respect to European achievement in visual arts as I do to othercultures such as Egyptians, Indian or Chinese.RA: Why do you find 'the adherence' to European art in your workdisturbing?AW: Because of the historical background.RA: Are you trying to get rid of it?AW: All my life I have been trying to get rid of it.RA: Can you really get rid of it?AW: I don't know. If we can get rid of it in ourselves, it will be a greatachievement. I don't think getting rid of economic structures or changingthem is enough. We have to find new values, new directions, which wecan now do only with the coming generations. Not so much withourselves. We have to get the machinery to do this, a platform, youunderstand?

1987

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