African-American artist Kara Walker is this year's recipient for the Hyundai sponsored commission at the Tate Modern, which is displayed in their Turbine Hall. Her previous work tackles ideals of race, identity and sexuality, and she is usually experimental with her mediums which include painting, sculpture, installation and print-making. Her chosen piece for this particular installation, is an impressive 13-metre-tall, four-tiered memorial fountain entitled "Fons Americanus", which explores the harsh reality of African origins in America, aided by British forces and colonialism.
The fountain is modelled on the Victoria Memorial, a monument that was finished during the reign of George V to honour his grand-mother, the late Queen Victoria, which stands in all its glory on Pall Mall outside Buckingham Palace. Walker glimpsed the monument outside her taxi window on her way to the airport one day, and took inspiration from her blurry photos taken as she whizzed past to create this impressive commission.
In the original memorial, a statue of the solemn Queen faces the mall on her ornate thronel, in the company of the personifications of Courage, Constancy, Motherhood, Justice, Truth, Manufacture, Agriculture, Peace and Progress. Walker recreates versions of these allegorical characters with her own satirical twist to question the validity of story-telling told in public monuments.
Queen Victoria is replaced by "Queen Vicky" and is repositioned at the back of the memorial. Her primitive form is contorted into a cackling grotesque, uncharacteristic of the sombre widow she is modelled on, one hand leaning towards on a crouching representation of Melancholy, the other holding a coconut to her bosom. Beside her, kneels a distressed man clothed in Victorian finery, his hands brought together in prayer, as though he is begging for forgiveness. The "Kneeling Man" is believed to be modelled on the former Governor of the West Indies, Sir William Young who owned sugar plantations manned by hundreds of slaves. Confronting viewers as they walk into the Turbine Hall, is "The Captain" a representation of the brave black men who fought against colonists. The final statue is that of a tree, with a noose hanging from one of its broken branches, which was a fate many African-Americans suffered at the hands of white supremacists.
The gilded bronze model of Victory that stands on the top of the Mall's memorial is replaced by a half-naked "Venus", her back arched, arms flailing as water gushes out from her nipples and from a puncture to her neck trailing down the multiple tiers to feed the rippling waters at the basin below.
Walker also references the Victoria Memorial's nautical theme by replacing the decorative mermaids with swimmers fleeing from hungry sharks, and mocks the memorial's tributes to its oppressive naval fleet with remnants of a shipwreck among the jagged rocks, to represent the treacherous voyage through the Middle Passage. Many of the sculptural scenes reference painter pieces by J.M.W Turner, Winslow Homer and John Singleton Copley, and there's even reference to Damien Hirst's famous piece, a shark preserved in formaldehyde.
Before you even encounter the huge monument at the far end of the Turbine Hall, you pass a smaller sculpture in the shape of a scallop shell titled "Shell Grotto", which we happened to notice on our way out. Rather than encasing a precious pearl within its centre, a wide-eyed head of a boy peaks up. His face is stained with wet tears, the rest of his body submerged the the folds of meaty interior of his shell.
The piece was incredibly impressive as was it's symbolism and meaning. You assume a statue or a fountain is erected as a source of decoration, but in fact each small element aims to celebrate a so called victory from a very one sided approach. Walker challenged the honesty of the Victoria Memorial by revealing the harsh and brutal truth that bleed and suffered to bring advancement and riches to a greedy empire.
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