Category Archives: w r i t i n g s

The Samurai Exhibition

Some thoughts about

Braden Sadler & the Samurai Exhibition

August 13, 2023

We went to see the Samurai exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta yesterday. If I absorbed the wall text correctly, local artist Braden Sadler was responsible for the creative vision of some of the exhibition design, including the entry room. There the walls were plastered with documentation of the Samurai in popular culture. You could watch video sequences that included expected excerpts from Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, in addition to quick peeks at Forest Whitiker working his sword as the title character from Jim Jarmusch’s film Ghost Dog. Whitiker played an assassin who lived by the Samurai Code and communicated via pigeon post. (Fantastic soundtrack btw, including Wu-Tang Clan and Whitiker reading from the Samurai Code.) A still image of larger-than-life Uma Thurman as The Bride from Tarantino’s Kill Bill stared out at us with murderous eyes. A portrait of Darth Vader was juxtaposed with that of a Samurai in full regalia in such a way that the similarities in their costuming became immediately evident. This compelling contemporary perspective was a good reminder of the global influence of Samurai culture and the continued significance of the artifacts that we were about to experience.

Somewhat off-tangent, I know, but this display reminded me of the last room of the Pirates Museum in St. Augustine, Florida which we had visited the week prior. I know this is not very high-brow, but still memorable and worth a comparison. After viewing heavy implements of torture, many maps, and treasure paraphernalia, the last room brought into focus the continued love of the idea of the Pirate. Every inch of wall in this small room of departure was covered with images of pirates in movies and visual art. Included was a promotional poster and sound recording from Hook with Robin Williams, who I always love to see in any role, and small reproductions by the “Pirate Painter” Howard Pyle. I did not know that he had been called that by some. This incorporation of current culture into a historical exhibition can make it feel more relevant for some of us.

Back to Samurais–about halfway through the procession of the exhibit, a narrow gallery appeared dedicated to a series of paintings by Sadler. These large works of ink and watercolor on paper (53″ x 108″), were commissioned for this exhibition. They illustrate a chapter from the story of Yasuke, the black Samurai. You can see them on Sadler’s website.

Sadler’s cultivated style, influenced by the stylized shapes and lyrical line of Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking and calligraphy, brought to life the Samurai garments on display in a way that made them come alive so that I could imagine the people who wore them to battle centuries ago.

I’ve admired Sadler’s work for some time as he created one of my favorite local mural experiences that can be felt when driving on North Ave, under the bridge of the Beltline, through his The Gateway to Change: Abhaya’s Way, 2020. It was insightful for the High to incorporate his versatile, fresh voice into the exhibition.

The Gateway to Change: Abhaya’s Way

Murder Ballad statement (early)

Leave a reply

In my work there is a sense of loss that I foment rather than assuage. I process the ridiculousness and beauty of the depths of this melancholy. This feeling is resurrected in myself through a persistent empathy of the losses of others—from human against human violence, natural disaster and economics. Current times present such sorrows. As photographs bombard the visual plane and the numbers of dead come rolling in off the sweet tongues of media, I have little energy to mourn. This crushing weight of global suffering is not new, just exacerbated in the psyche.

I focus on the buried and insidious effects of diaspora, loss and trauma. Currently I am interested in an architecture of intimacy—the interweaving of history and place, especially the spaces where the everydayness of life happens, where one sleeps and cooks, loves and prays, and gathers as a community. I am fascinated by the fates of spaces of private ritual when those who have animated them disappear through tragic circumstance. These often seemingly neutral sites, whether destroyed or long-lived, will connect with new families and communities. I believe that such structures absorb the energies of the beings who spent time within their walls. Old memories remain embedded in the limbs and heart of place—the floor, walls, buried beneath layers of fresh paint and deep earth. This belief is likely born from my longing to know the places where my ancestors walked—houses and synagogues left by my family in Europe during World War II. These spaces of habit and refuge take form in my imagination.

My current work is an imaginary narrative. The subject matter, somewhat campy depictions of brutal murder scenes, was triggered by a violent crime spree in my neighborhood in late 2010. All have a similar format. The locations are culled predominately from collected postcards of old European buildings which are usually outdoors and scenes from BBC television shows such as Wallander and Downton Abbey. The dead body, female and nude, is found hunched over in the foreground with a stake in her back. These absurd scenes, called “Murder Ballads,” hum quiet tales of private devastation.

“This beautiful tangle” curator’s statement

“This beautiful tangle,” logo designed by Suepie Archie

“This beautiful tangle,” curator Lisa Alembik
October 13-December 3, 2016

Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

Scott Belville
Didi Dunphy
Steve Eberhardt
Julia A. Fenton
Heather M. Foster
Molly Rose Freeman
Bessie Harvey
Hope Hilton
George Long
Aubrey Longley-Cook
Charlie Lucas
Forest McMullin
Mario Petrirena
Jessica Scott-Felder
Karen Tauches & Calvin Burgamy
Cosmo Whyte

Artists in This beautiful tangle spread their arms out to enmesh themselves with the universe. Some crawl deep into intimate entwinings where they gladly lose themselves to another. Relationships are explored—those with ancestors and strangers, communities and country. Other artists encourage a connection to the local through the natural environment.

We need to make connections. From the first moment that we breathe air most of us want to bond with something bigger than ourselves. As children we want to become one with our parents, hopefully to be absorbed into family and community. We will define ourselves first by our kin and culture, then by where we grew up—and eventually by our friends and our stories. We want to know that we belong somewhere and to hold, and be held by, a power outside of ourselves. These relationships help us recognize who we are. Belonging to something must be how we feel fully warm-blooded.

Many of us hope to better understand ourselves by turning our lenses inward. Still, we search for our elusive reflection in our relationships—in the eyes around us, on the path where we once tread and within an all-knowing landscape that we seek. Some live in a never-ending state of wanting to belong. We bond with people who were once strangers to become family by choice, and build home. Others don’t want attachments—or imagine it is so. Over time these connections become a weaving of beings and places that continue to form us.

In our search for belonging we may reach for a patch of ground to call home. There we dig, plant, paint, and settle. May be. Sometimes we escape a place, to then repeatedly dwell over it—running back over and over in our minds what happened there. But when we are enshrined in that perfect place, we can feel safe and whole, at home. Sometimes within a land that we call our own we sense the divine. Ideally we get to know our communities, to hopefully fall in love with place and people. Without these connections we can feel unmoored. Instead, we hook into a network of like minds, the energy of many grounding us.

This beautiful tangle represents a dynamic range of media exploring a breadth of ideas that come together under the premise that, over time, the connections we make, this weaving of beings and places, continue to form us. Textiles used and found, murals, cross-stitching, leaf gathering, eye-reading, chair-kissing works will fill the Dalton Gallery.

Save