The Wildebeest images in Prey are the
first of a series of pieces that I am creating as I explore the state of our world today.
More specifically, our vulnerability in the world today (terrorism scare and all).
I started this process by using images I photographed during my travels through
Africa in 1994. The Africa experience is
important to me because it is when I first felt both vulnerable and realized.
The realized component is about my transformation during those travels; it is how I became
an artist.
The vulnerability came at another level-- physical and
mental anguish. I was out there alone for over two months and taking heavy dosages
of Larium. I had no idea that the anti-malarial had side effects that messed
with my head. I endured those with Giardia (intestinal parasites),
Scabies, and altitude sickness. I remember being dragged down Mt. Kilimanjaro
in a trail of my vomit and diarrhea. It was complete vulnerability, rescued by two
total strangers. Disoriented, confused, alone. Scared. The stuff most
people don't get to feel in life.
Until now. We are all collectively being threatened--
our government uses color-coded bars to assess the proximity of the danger. The best
thing we can do is ignore it, or so it seems. I for one want to stay in complete
denial, but realize that one day two rescue workers may be dragging me down the fire
escape of a bombed out building. One day, I may be wishing that malaria was
the biological agent in my blood stream. Larium the foreign chemical in my body. I
know it sounds freaky. So freaky, we shouldn't even let the thoughts pop in our
head.
However, it is so freaky, I chose to tackle it
head on. I rather create art about it,
write about it, talk about it. Better
to do that than keep it inside and repressed.
Denial has a way of having anxiety percolate; perhaps
amplifying an impossibility, making us doubt and suffer silently. Speaking
about it helps us cope. I should know, as I was suffering alone in Kenya and
Tanzania, I would take out my pastels and Conte crayons and draw what I was feeling.
They were pretty powerful pieces, almost a dozen of them. Pieces about the way I was
perceiving Africa, our world, society, myself. I actually used those images in
U.S. Embassy-sponsored lectures I gave at the end of my stay in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and in Nairobi, Kenya.
The last time I saw the drawings they were hanging on the
wall at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, as
part of an impromptu exhibit the lecture hosts organized for me. I don't think
I'll ever see them again: the Embassy staff never got around to returning
them. As we all know, the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi was bombed by Al Qaeda a few
years later.
A precursor of horrors to come.
Xavier Cortada
February 19, 2003
