Tides of Freedom Exhibit: Regina Kay & Lucien Downes Artist Talk: Art As History

M.A. Dworkin

St. Croix - There are many ways to pass down the history and the culture of an indigenous people. It is crucially important that the next generation be aware of what its elders and forefathers left behind in the way of knowledge. Footprints in the snow. Tracks in the sand - Follow them down to the sea, over the horizon, and there you’ll find a path to the future. 

Yet, what is all too often overlooked in this dizzying modern world, is the bottle that floats in on the waves from far, far away; it lands on our shores, piques our imagination and floods our mind with its message. It may not carry a printed message, but a picture, perhaps a tiny painting that has survived the journey, survived the ravages of time. It brings us a message that is as powerful as any message that has been transmitted through the ages - it is the timeless message of art. And it has so much to teach us. At times, it speaks volumes of what we have been through, the battles we have lost and won. It speaks of where we have been, what we are about, and what has caused us to head down the path we have chosen.

If it is possible to classify an artist as an Art Historian, then Regina Kay and Lucien Downes fall firmly into that classification. It seems they create art with the singular purpose of bringing the history of their people of the Virgin Islands onto their canvas. In so doing, they teach their patrons about the beauty, the savagery, the dynamics of a world that may seem long gone, but one that has shaped us to who we are as a people, and one that cannot and should not ever be forgotten.

In the second installment of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources’ Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums’ (DLAM), Lunchtime with the Artist - a conversation ensues with artists Regina Kay and Lucien Downes, who contributed to the Tides of Freedom Exhibition currently on display at the Fort Frederick Museum in Frederiksted. The Lunchtime Talk quickly turned from the inspirations of their younger days as artists to the true meaning behind the paintings they have created.

In her woodwork Maternal Line, a stunning work, revolutionary in its concept,  that combines written and pictorial representations of Ms. Kay’s family’s life down through the decades, it traces their history from the years of their enslavement to their present influences. Ms. Kay includes in the work the words that her grandmother passed down to her family: “Don’t let them put you back in the barracoon.”

The quotation is the oldest surviving evidence of a family conversation about slavery that exists for the artist. A barracoon is an enclosure in which slaves were confined for a limited period of time. 

Ms. Kay also spoke about her attempts to piece together the history of the Virgin Islands and how difficult it has been to accomplish that feat.

“The history is orchestrated…The real historical facts have been wiped out, erased or redacted. No one wanted the true story of what happened during those years to come to light…In African history it was absolutely deliberate. But it is very, very important that everyone has access to the archives…we are fighting to get our archival material back from Denmark,” said Ms Kay.

Lucien Downes painting Queen of the Bamboula, hand painted Giclee print, relates the artist’s feelings about the Bamboula Dance itself. The dance is defined by its lightness of spirit, its airy, dreamy content that governs the dancers movements, which echoes those days of slavery and the feelings of freedom that enslaved Virgin Islanders who were able to express themselves through the Bamboula dance. Mr. Downes feels that the Bamboula, not the Quadrille, is the dance that best represents the past of the Virgin Islands. It was one of the only forms of communication that was available under the oppressive regimes that governed life in those wretchedly miserable days of slavery. It was a dance that the people performed to organize, and to display their true feelings that had to be suppressed as they suffered the horrors of their oppressors.  

“Bamboula is very spiritual…You have to understand the fact that if we are going to make something national, it has to go along with the history,” Mr. Downes stated. “It’s like madras, the fabric is from India.”

The conversation, on the surface, had seemed to stray a long way from the art that we think of as beautiful paintings hanging off gallery walls, but when you listened to these two highly talented and extremely intellectual artists, along with the moderators, DLAM’s Territorial Chief Curator, Monica Marin and DLAM’s Territorial Director, Amy Parker De Sorbo, it was easy to realize that the beauty of  creation for these two artists lay hidden somewhere in their life blood, in their soul; and their creations have been brought forth as much out of a need to not only create something meaningful and lasting, but to set the record straight, to create an artistic historical document that brings to light the realities of the past as it bleeds into the mindset of the present.