A Critique of the Film Faya Dayi

 Article published at these online magazines around December 25, 2021:

Addis Insight, ZeHabesha, Borkena, Ethiopia 360

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Khat is the main protagonist in Jessica Beshir’s film Faya Dayi that leads and guides the direction of the film. But it is a protagonist which camouflages the truth of these Harari-Oromo youth of southern Ethiopia. And Faya Dayi is now a contender for the Oscars (1), shortlisted in the “Documentary Feature” category.

Beshir hides from us, the viewers, the content and reality of her film behind the stylistic cinematic metaphor of khat’s haze, and takes us for a trip. Her film, which appears at face value to be about the devastations that khat causes these southern Ethiopian communities, is in fact a film with a political agenda that is camouflaged behind khat’s shady smoke, a smoke that hooks the film’s audience into its spell.

As Nick Taylor, an astute reviewer at The Film Experience writes (2): 

...the heavy monochromatic images cloak Ethiopia in a hazy, dreamlike aura that's foundational to the film's tone and point of view.

And asks:

Does the gorgeousness of the imagery actually serve the film, or is it too loaded down to carry its own weight? How much movie truly lies underneath all this black and silver? Well..

Beshir plays with the naivete of the average documentary film audience, who is primarily from a Western county, and who has little information on the socio-political landscape of Ethiopia. 

Adiam Biare, an independent Eritrean businesswoman not affiliated with the film industry, and representing the POWer of Women film festival (POW Film Fest), asks Beshir(3):

I also noticed - and I was just curious about this - that some shots were body parts, like the hand and not the full person. Was there a thought behind that? Or was just...coincidence? Because I thought there was so much power in those...just watching the hand movements and there hearing the person talk and not seeing the whole person…

Beshir answers:

Of course that was thought of...There is a lot of power in the image, in which part, and what is it that you’re showing, and what is speaking to you at the moment. And where is that emotional response landing, at the time that I’m there shooting. So those are the body parts that were speaking to me the most when I was there...And I guess that becomes a little bit of a language of the film. A little bit of the perspective...And I was trying to understand what these different perspectives bring to the whole. If I were to shoot the whole, what is that communicating, as opposed to a part. And how that part can also speak volumes...More that the bigger pictures, per se. It was again, that “caller-response.” 

And Selome Hailu, a writer from the Variety asks the all-important question (4):

“What does Faya Dayi mean?”

Answers Beshir:

“You know, I didn’t find out the meaning until about a year ago.” 

And Beshir continues to elaborate her discovery of the meaning of this phrase, after she had already shot her documentary - 

“The meaning is ‘giving birth to wellness,’ or ‘giving birth to health.’ I had no idea. It’s a hymnal chant that [farmers in Harar] chant when they’re harvesting. It’s a moving chant that has stayed with me. I felt like, ‘Okay, whatever comes out of this film - because I don’t know what it’s going to be - it’s going to be called Faya Dayi. I knew that from the get-go. Because they’re chanting, they’re giving each other morale and energy to continue to work…’

“Hazy aura” and “not seeing the whole person.” A chant with no explanation. What does all this mean? What is the purpose of Faya Dayi, if we cannot clearly view the images, see the whole body - the whole person - or understand the chant? 

Beshir’s aim is to introduce her own perspective, which she solidifies into an agenda. 

The London based filmmaker and Third World activist Ruhi Hamid tweeted (5) an exulting couple of lines on Faya Dayi in October 2021, just as the film was released into the film festival circuit, and in this case at the London Film Festival’s (LFF):

Just seen the most beautiful and powerful film at the #LFF Faya Dayi is an intimate observation of an Ethiopian Muslim community lovingly told by its Ethiopian director Jessica Beshir. Obs doc at its best. #Ethiopia#harrar#observational#Documentary:

I sent an email to Hamid:

Beshir got vague translations of the stories her subjects told her while she was on location in Harar, but didn't find out their exact words until much later. While putting the film together in New York, she would send selected sound bites to someone in Ethiopia who would translate Oromoo [Oromigna] to Amharic so she could translate the English subtitles herself [Source: Chanting at Sundance: Jessica Beshir on Faya Dayi]." 

[...]

Isn’t one of the tenets of “anthropological” [i.e. Obs doc] filmmaking to know the culture? Beshir spent ten years making this film.  

I spent two years in Mexico to perform rural health research. Within six months I was close to fluent in Spanish. By the end of my two years, people mistook me for a Mexican. 

Hamid never replied. But she never followed up on this “most beautiful and powerful film” in further posts.

Other accolades and praises followed, with but a few cutting through the heavy smoke. The haze of Faya Dayi seems to have successfully covered the issues and agendas, intoxicating the film audience.

It is difficult to keep up with the times, and with the global times. And infinitely more difficult to understand all the nuances, back stories, and other stories to thread together the truth of the information we receive in our Brave New World.

Beshir was interviewed on Faya Dayi by a group that has a podcast platform called Free Oromia. The interview is recorded on episode 41 at their podcast (6). The group posted a tweet (7), which the elusive Beshir carefully managed through links, where she “liked” this post with both her @fayadayi (8) and @jessybeshir (9) twitter accounts, but retweets it only with her @fayadayi account, making it more difficult to pin down injurious associations [see links at the bottom of the tweet].

We’re so excited to announce our latest episode where we had the chance to discuss @FAYADAYI with the incredible @jessybeshir! #FayaDayi

This group, whose twitter location sign is set up as “Liberated Oromia,” is an Oromo secessionist organization, for the Oromo region to seceed from the Greater Ethiopia. 

The Free Oromia podcast page links to the group’s Facebook (10), which then takes us to its website (11).

The group clarifies its Free Oromia platform in the main page of its website:

Welcome to Free Oromia

Envisioning an independent and sovereign Oromia

And links  to their proclamation on: “Why we must free Oromia” where 

...freedom in the form of independence and sovereignty is a conversation that must be normalized (12)

Their Facebook page is explicit and clear about “Why we must free Oromia”:

Welcome to Free Oromia. We envision an independent and sovereign Oromia in which the people of the nation determine its future.

Another, twitter-active secessionist, Marartuu Marartuu (13), posts on Faya Dayi, with a screen shot from the film.  “All of this because we are #Oromo. Nothing new,” and “...our struggle continues.” This latter is a subtitle from the film (14). Marartuu links to the website olafightsforme.com in her introductory post. 

The OLA  (in the website’s name “olafightsforme.com) is the Oromo Liberation Army (15).

A November 8, 2021 article at Africa Report defines the OLA as (16):

The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), is an ethnic Oromo armed group fighting the Ethiopian government alongside Tigrayan rebels. They (OLA) are based in Oromia, the largest region in the Ethiopia that encloses Addis Ababa.

It’s leader, Jaal Marroo, whose name the Free Oromiya podcast most likely uses as a pseudonym, says this, from a November 11, 2021 article in Africa Report (17):

Jaal Marroo, the Ethiopian military leader in charge of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), has warned Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that his rebels are inching closer to victory, as the conflict in Ethiopia continues to escalate.

“What I am sure [of] is that it is going to end very soon. We are preparing to push for another launch, and for another attack. The government is just trying to buy time, and they are trying to instigate [a] civil war in this country, so they are calling for the nation to fight,” Marroo said in an interview with AFP on Sunday 7 November.

Beshir (in the back) with the Oromo Legacy Leadership & Advocacy Association

 

At a time of unprecedented reconciliation, when the Prime Minister of Ethiopia is a half-Oromo with a Muslim father (18), and who was re-elected through a nation-wide, transparent, world-viewed campaign, Jessica Beshir remains bitter and vindictive. 

 

If Beshir is to count her gripes, then she should include a myriad of other ethnic groups, like the Tigray (19) from the north, who speak Tigrigna at home, but communicate in the official language of Amharic in their day-to-day interactions. 

 

One important piece of information which Beshir rarely talks about is her Mexican mother (20). I wonder if this duality, Mexican and Ethiopian, caused her to go full-on with her Oromo “identity,” in order to establish for her self a psychological comfort of belonging “somewhere.” 

 

Her film’s illusive, haze-filled atmosphere is a metaphor for her psyche, where truth and concrete images are camouflaged behind all-encompassing smoke. 

 

On a practical level, something which Beshir never discusses, if she were to be of any help to these Oromo youth, on whose backs she made this film, her obligation is to provide them with educational and drug treatment centers: no more flickers on a cinema screen, but real, on the ground, centers of rehabilitation. 

 

PM Abiy has been doing this for the past couple of years: helping the Oromo (21). 

 

(Image Source)

 

If Beshir were really up to it, and not in her mental cinematic mood, which apparently isn’t going away any time soon, she would contact these local Oromo centers, and why not, PM Abiy himself, to go ahead with putting her money where her mouth is. 

 

Instead, Beshir lives in her smart Brooklyn apartment, plotting her next film against Ethiopia, and her false, distant, allegiance to the Oromo of Ethiopia.

 

Faya Dayi is shortlisted in the 94th Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Documentary Feature category, where the winner will be revealed in the March 2022 Oscars. Oscar nomination (or win) in an obscure category as Documentary Film will hardly raise the profile of Faya Dayi, which has essentially become a “film festival circuit” film, watched by loyal, almost cultish, followers. The audiences that watches it, and gives it the accolades I described above, will hardly put a dent in the financial gains, and general recognition, of the film, nor of Beshir. 

 

Raell Ross, a black American documentary filmmaker best describes his life after his Oscar win, which he admits didn’t advance his profile much (22):

 

“There were people from several major companies that bought all these other films, who would tell me that they liked ‘Hale,’ but they didn’t know what to do with it,” Ross said. “The thing about my film is that it’s not so easily log-lined and it’s impossible to know what it is until you see it, but I still obviously want as many people to see it as possible.”

 

New York-based The Cinema Guild eventually acquired the film, giving it a limited theatrical run last fall. It opened to universal critical acclaim, and the documentary community mobilized around Ross’ achievement, which culminated in its Oscar nomination. But Ross said that outcome has had a negligible effect on him.

 

“It doesn’t really mean anything personally to me, and I don’t think about it unless someone mentions it,” he said. “Since then, I’ve had several inquiries from people about collaborating on film projects, but nothing has really come out of any conversations.” He added that the limited income potential of documentaries, his interests as a filmmaker, and his experimental style were all deterrents from the prospects of landing some major gig.

 

Perhaps Ross invested too much in politics, and less in practicalities. 

 

Beshir’s film will probably receive the same fate. But, its recognition by the Oscars will set the stage for truth telling. When ordinary Ethiopians begin to see the film, or at least hear of its Oscar line-up, then they will begin to ask questions, and demand answers. Is Beshir really schilling for Ethiopia, or is she simply an anomaly, a Mexican-American-Oromo? Fringe film agencies and out-of-view cinema theaters can no longer hide behind their lazy ignorance, nor their blind support of a film with a clear political agenda. And serious artists, who have spent years studying contemporary film, will analyze it without the status quo breathing down their backs. I am such a critic.

 

 

References:

 

1. 94th Oscars Shortlist. https://www.oscars.org/oscars/94th-oscars-shortlists

2. Taylor, Nick. (2021, November 24) Gotham Nominees: Faya Dayi. The Film Experience. http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2021/11/24/gotham-nominees-faya-dayi.html

3. POW Film Fest. (September 1, 2021) Jessica Beshir Talks About her Film Faya Dayi. http://fb.watch/a3ShJukahe

4. Hailu, Selome. ((2021, February 12) Chanting at Sundance: Jessica Beshir on Faya Dayi Letterboxed. https://letterboxd.com/festiville/story/chanting-at-sundance-jessica-beshir-on-faya/

5. Ruhi Hamid [@RuhiHamid]. (2021, October 10). Just seen the most beautiful and powerful film at the #LFF Faya Dayi is an intimate observation of an Ethiopian Muslim community. Twitter. https://twitter.com/RuhiHamid/status/1447257423052423171

6. Maroo, J., & Aangoo, J. (Hosts). (2021, September 16). Faya Dayi. [Audio Podcast episode]. https://freeoromia.buzzsprout.com/1447450/9207747-ep-41-faya-dayi 

7. Free Oromia Podcast [@TeamFreeOromia]. (2021, September 16). We’re so excited to announce our latest episode where we had the chance to discuss @FAYADAYI with the incredible @jessybeshir! Twitter. https://mobile.twitter.com/TeamFreeOromia/status/1438659239094935555

8. Faya Dayi [@fayadayi] https://mobile.twitter.com/FayaDayi 

9. Jessica Beshir [@jessybeshir] https://twitter.com/jessybeshir 

10. Free Oromia. (n.d.) Home [Facebook page]. Facebook. Retrieved December 23, 2021 from https://www.facebook.com/TeamFreeOromia/ 

11. Free Oromia. https://www.freeoromia.org/ 

12. Free Oromia. Why We Must Free Oromia. https://www.freeoromia.org/why   

13 Marartuu [@misskitila]. (2021, January 30) “All of this because we are #Oromo. Nothing new.” https://twitter.com/misskitila/status/1355633795790155778 

14. Cinematheque Trailers (2021, August 25). Faya Dayi (2021) - Documentary [Trailer]. https://youtu.be/fPBrV9V1ylw 

15. OLA Fights for Me. https://olafightsforme.com/ 

16. Africa Report. (2021, November 8) Redaction - African News. Ethiopia: Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the Other Group Fighting Federal Forces. https://www.africanews.com/2021/11/08/ethiopia-oromo-liberation-army-ola-the-other-group-fighting-federal-forces//

17. Hanspal, Jaysim. (2021, November 11). Ethiopia: Who is Jaal Maroo, the Military Leader in Charge of the OLA? https://www.theafricareport.com/144673/ethiopia-who-is-jaal-marroo-the-military-leader-in-charge-of-the-ola/ 

18. Military Wiki. Abiy Ahmed. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Abiy_Ahmed 

19. Britannica. Tigrinya Language. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tigrinya-language 

20. Jardin de Ninos & Primaria. Quines Somos. https://www.serradell.edu.mx/about 

21. Abiy Ahmed Ali [@AbiyAhmedAli]. (2021, March 13). Summer wheat cluster farming in Heben Arsi woreda of Oromia region. https://twitter.com/abiyahmedali/status/1370703479296102402   

22. Obesen, Tambay. (2019, April 4). RaMell Ross’ Oscar Nomination Hasn’t Stopped His Experimental Career Plans. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/ramell-ross-hale-county-this-morning-this-evening-interview-1202055006/ 

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Faya Dayi: Critique of Jessica Beshir’s Documentary Film

December 23, 2021

Kidst Paulos Asrat

Writer and Artist

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

Related Article: Ethiopia's Elections - A Strong and United Ethiopia 

Spiritual Envy in Harar

Here is one of my first posts at my Camera Lucida blog (2005-2013). It was on Harar:

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Friday September 30, 2005                                                                                                              Writers in Harar 

Arthur Rimbaud has his own house/museum in the city of Harar. Perhaps it is in the name of literary tradition that Canadian novelist Camilla Gibb has made a special ode to this walled, Southern Islamic city in Ethiopia in her new book "Sweetness in the Belly".

It is always curious why writers pay such high praises to this city. Although Rimbaud initially said he was living in boredom, he stayed in Harar on-and-off for ten years.

Sir Richard Burton preferred to investigate Harar in his "First Footsteps in East Africa" rather than travel to the northern Christian Highlands of the Amhara people. And even Evelyn Waugh couldn’t see the ancient strength of this Christian civilization, and in his journalistic travelogues "Waugh in Abyssinia" and "Remote People" at times appeared much more complimentary toward the Southern Harare/Somali Muslims. His novel "Scoop", based on his journalistic experience of the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, is centered around the fictional ‘East African’ country of…Ishmaelia. This is all the more surprising in light of Waugh’s recent conversion to Catholicism. But it could just be that he was temporarily side-tracked by the Catholic (yet fascist) Italians. And such a basic Christianity may have been too much to handle.

I suspect that it is mostly atheist/pantheist/agnostic writers who are lured into the facile spirituality (sensuality) of places like Harar. As always with exotic works, the subject rings of the writer/traveler himself, in his spiritual (or similar) quest to find some meaning in his life. Usually, the farther away from home, the better.

The disciplined, ancient and exclusive Christianity of the highlander Amhara is too difficult and too demanding, and too close to home. I think this Biblical fear drives these writers away. It is easier to wallow in the accessible sensuality of a Southern Muslim city, in search of a generalized spirituality.

The Islam of Harar may be beguiling, and easier to enter. But it is far less forgiving and far less compassionate than the Christianity of the austere Highlanders.

From a TVOntario interview of Camilla Gibb, who says that after the events of 9/11, she changed the direction of her novel to take on a lighter, gentler Islam, making her an (atheist) Islam apologist: 

When the capacity for some kind of spiritual life is taken from you, and not even fostered, you can never reclaim it, or at least not in any kind of conventional way... 

It is curious that a devout atheist should end up writing a book...that has so much to do with spirituality, but I think it is born of a place of envy.

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Post on Gibb and her background

NB (2021): I cannot find the source of the TVOntario quote above, but I will still leave it up, and update any new finds.

Addendum (2021): Here is a drawing by Vincent Smith (whose drawing of Rimbaud's house in Harar is here).

It is fascinating that he titles this image "Ethiopian Women Wearing Traditional Shama"

Shama is the general term used for the traditional Amhara dress, which consists of finely woven cotton material made into dress and shawl. There is NO mistaking shama.

What we have here is "traditional Harari women" and the requisitory veil that Muslim women wear.

Facts become irrelevant (or not necessary) for the lazy, and agenda-prone writer/photographer/traveler.

And, Vincent Smith is a "civil rights" era Black American, so he clearly brings his own agenda with him. 

And the agenda is as I wrote above: the beguiling spirituality of Harar for the atheist traveler.

Also, the spiritually confident, strict, Orthodox Christian Amhara would have none of this facile traveler, and make demands on him that he wouldn't be able to meet.

More posts on Ethiopian dress:

- The Diamond Receptacle

Faya Dayi - My comment - More Reivews and Critique - on Beshir's Film - At Film Comment

Posted at Film Comment:

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Dear Mr. Taylor

You set the tone of your review of Faya Dayi with this phrase, in the first paragraph:

"In cahoots with the editing and sound design, the heavy monochromatic images cloak Ethiopia

in a hazy, dreamlike aura that's foundational to the film's tone and point of view."

And in the following paragraph, you ask:

"Does the gorgeousness of the imagery actually serve the film, or is it too loaded down to carry its

 own weight? How much movie truly lies underneath all this black and silver? Well..."

I believe you are asking about form and content, the perennial choice that all artists must make with their work,

and which they must decide takes precedence, or whether to weigh them both equally.

Beshir chose form over content. Or more precisely, she chose to camouflage content with form.

The "hazy, dreamlike aura" hides this content, which you adroitly describe: "There isn't much structure

connecting one scene or testimony of Faya Dayi to the next..." And "...Beshir's style doesn't really facilitate the

sort of portraiture she's aiming for..."

Beshir uses khat as a subject, a protagonist, that leads and guides the direction of the film, but whose "haze"

hides the truth of these Oromo youth. For example, the young man who wants to go to Egypt has no game plan,

and khat becomes his crutch, his "co-actor," as the drug he takes to avoid the reality, the content, of his life.

And Beshir also uses this khat as a stylistic, cinematic metaphor, to hide from us, the viewers, the content and

reality behind her film. She films as though she herself is under the chewable spell of this drug, and it is likely

that she took khat as part of her filming process.

Khat causes devastation, but it also produces the spiritual Sufi high, and it provided her (literally, possibly, but

certainly cinematically) the form with which she can shoot and produce this film, whose main protagonist, as

I said earlier is khat, but perhaps khat's merkhanna might be more precise.

She cannot full-on discuss the devastation that the khat crop produces for this Harari-Oromo Ethiopians,

since khat is after all part of the merkhanna, the spiritual high, that is sought after by the regional Sufi-Harari

Muslims. This film should have centred directly on this agricultural devastation, rather than weave through

"spirituality" and mekhanna, through khat.

Khat thus becomes the distinguishing object, the"Sufiness," and the merkhanna upon which this film rest

it laurels.

But what is Beshir hiding, what is she camouflaging?

Of course, more directly, it it the devastating, life-destroying drug that has become the life of these

Harari-Oromo youth.

But Beshir is also projecting a political angle, and a strong one. The Harari-Oromo youth,

through oppression, governmental neglect, and poverty, are forced to give up other cash crops like coffee

in order to grow this substance for their livelihood, and their energy-inducing chanting calls

(mimicking religious chants) gives them the rhythmic, and spell-binding, strength to harvest their currency.

And of course, through the haze of her cinematography, it is not clear which government, which export route,

 and what kind of neglect.

Once Beshir starts to clearly answer, or present, these issues, then her khat thesis of the oppressed, neglected,

and devastated Oromo youth falls apart.

Beshir is talking about the governments previous to this one, whose current leader is Abiy Ahmed Ali,

a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose father is Oromo-Muslim (and mother an Orthodox Christian Amhara -

and he himself grew up a Christian, and married an Amhara Christian wife), and who was born in the Jimma

region of the Oromo province.

Previous to PM Abiy Amhed Ali, Ethiopia was run by two successive, vicious, Marxist governments.

The first was installed after massacres of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian, of all ethnicities, as the

Emperor Haile Selassie, the emperor who stood his ground against fascist Mussolini's invasion, was deposed

in the early 1970s. Decades of rule under Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Communist head of state of Ethiopia

until he was removed by another group of hard-core Marxists in 1991. This second group also spared

no lives to further their totalitarian regime.

PM Abiy was a young man when he became an officer and joined forces to oust this second regime.

He eventually went on to become a re-elected leader of Ethiopia (Ethiopian elections were completed

just last year).

During both these eras of Communist rule, through manufactured famines, mass executions, perpetual states

of emergency, and innumerable non-trial arrests, Ethiopians still endured. But, these totalitarians saved no

person, had mercy on no-one. Oromo, Amhara, Tigray, and a host of smaller ethnic groups received the same

harsh treatment under the self-installed "judicial" system of these post-Haile Selassie, and pre-Abiy Ahmed,

leaders.

This is the back story Beshir's camera cannot tell you, which Beshir will not tell you.

She theretofore picks up a pet project - khat - which she remembers her grandmother harvesting in her garden

as she practiced her Sufi incantations - and projects it into the lives of these Oromo youth, upon whose poverty,

and whose backs, she builds her cinematographically hazy images, from her smart, Brooklyn apartment,

gathering monies and grants from a host of "sympathetic" agencies, and screening her films in

art-house film festivals, who profess support for oppressed peoples of the world, in the pop-corn outfitted

theatres, in air-conditions auditoriums.

And, here is, I believe, her end goal. Her film, and her picking at these sores and frustrations, could instigate

enough anger in her "oppressed" Oromo youth, that they may be ready to pick up whatever sticks, stones

and few gunpowder, to start their own "revolution" for "freedom." And these Western audiences would shower

their support, their concern, and their editorial opinions. Faya Dayi becomes/is a reference manual.

Beshir is evasively active in numerous Oromo liberation groups - through Facebook, Twitter, and through her

meetings/screenings of her film Faya Dayi, and other films she's done to date, namely one titled Hariat on the

hyena in Harar, in the US and now in Canada. She will never openly present this, since there would be too much

negative reaction, especially from her funders, and especially from her viewing public.

Her film gives her some validity in the eyes of those who publicly pronounce this liberation movement, and acts

as a documented reference for future activities, and actions. They can cut through the form in Faya Dayi, andget at its content.

One other thing Beshir won't dwell upon is her use of "Ethiopian" as she describes her identity. She calls

herself Mexican-Ethiopian.

She shows no love for Ethiopia, and uses that word opportunistically, as she uses those devastated youth of

Harar, to gain access into world view, and to be recognized (and noticed). Mexican-Oromo doesn't cut it.

And if she were really sincere, she would simply call herself "Oromo" and return to the land which she

left as a teen-ager, and make amends. Opening up a drug rehabilitation centre would be one way.  

And PM Abiy, through his Ethiopian First commitment, has already started khat-rehabilitation projects for

these youth. Beshir already has the place to go, where her Faya Dayi prize money might stand a chance.

I will be watching her next subversive, elusive, moves, as I suggest you do too.

I commend you for understanding the elusive nature of this documentary.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

https://artandcommentarybykidist.blogspot.com/p/ethiopias-elections-strong-and-united.html

Flutter of the Butterfly's Wings

 

 [Photo by KPA] - Blue Morpho Butterfly 

The Butterfly Conservatory, Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, Ontario

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I am part of an email group, and have attended meetings and social gatherings with this group in New York for a number of years. We discuss mostly socio-political issues, mostly centered around the United States, and with my contribution, Canada. A few times, I have presented the Ethiopian point of view, my idea being that the Christian country has more in common with the West than with the East.

Recently, I presented a proposition that we should support the PM of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, and his efforts to build this greater Ethiopia, in the tradition of the Ethiopian emperors, up to and including the late Emperor Haile Selassie.

One member of the group would have none of this, and my earnest efforts and my individual pursuits, from my art, to my Reclaiming Beauty (and Camera Lucida) 10+ years of documentations, stories, photographs, and views.

She accused me of "narcissism"  - imagine, a supposedly honorable member of this group stooping to name-calling. She demanded to be removed from this list, and so she has been.

I wrote about Mullarkey here, about five years ago. She's a painter, and I said about her work:

Her style is stark and bleak...

I have been called worse than a narcissist! But this has only built a thick skin, and I continue with my endeavors and ideas. Who is one "email" acquaintance to dictate my ideas and my thoughts? I have never personally met this woman, who has only recently asked to be included in the group. Late to come, first to go! Good riddance.

Those intuitive and intelligent should realize that what I say makes sense. The world is now constructed in "global" terms. A small country in the north of Africa could be the butterfly wing that starts the wave of crashes around the world.

About 70 years ago, a similar event occurred, where Italian Fascists decided that they would complete their earlier entry into Ethiopia, which was met in defeat under the now celebrated Adwa Victory, and take that land as part of their late-comers colonial swoop.

They failed again, but in a different way. Ethiopia was eventually liberated, with men from all over the country taking arms to fight this enemy. But, Haile Selassie's appeal to the impotent League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) was ignored, and the world sided with war, with devastating effects of the Second World War.

Sometimes faith in your message is what you need, or to be more precise, what you are obligated to have. Other messengers have come up short, wrong, and even pernicious. I have a long history, both at Reclaiming Beauty, and at Camera Lucida, of siding with Truth.

Shame. 

Jessica Beshir's Khat-High "Obs-Doc"

 I love the way ALL reviews of Faya Dayi, Jessica Beshir's khat-high "obs doc," skirt around, carefully, culturally-sensitively, around the fact that khat is a narcotic, which induces a "pharmacological" reaction in all its users.

Here is one interesting one:

[Faya Dayi is...] an evergreen psychotropic drug....[From The Brattle - for an upcoming interview with Beshir on December 13, 2021]

Evergreen - definition 

Happy New Year - Melkam Addis Amet

 A new year for Ethiopia, for new beginnings.

Sunflowers for a New Year

[Photo By: KPA]

Art Sabotage

I have my photograph at the "Sunflower" exhibition hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga.

It is of the barn, with sunflowers, at Visual Arts Mississauga, which I titled Barn Glow with Sunflowers.

I sent the same photograph for the Art Gallery of Mississauga's "Juried" exhibition, coming up in November. The AGM's site was long in describing the event, and who the "juries" were to be. Very close to the application deadline, they produced this list:

You can see their credentials at the site, here (or by clicking on their names at the announcement page, here).

Both Asma Sultana and Asma Mahmood are "South Asians."

Here are a few details about their artistic activities, and associations.

Mahmood's Face Book page has as its header this image:

Her post on this image says this:

I contacted Bushra Mahmood, through her website (I found through google - there is no link on Asma Mahmood's post) and asked her this:

To whom it may concern:

I found this image (attached) on the web, and was wondering if it is yours. The background looks like a "sunflower halo." If so, would you have a title for it, and its context.

Of course, the "sunflower" would fit in the theme of the recent Visual Arts Mississauga exhibition, of which Asma Mahmood would be aware.

I never heard back from B. Mahmood, but I found the image's exhibition history (through image search on google) at mybindi.com, supposedly posted on September 2013, although the actual site does not display the image. 

 

So what is it?

It looks like, besides the sunflower "glow," (or a sunflower crown?) of a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.

Mahmood's webiste address is goatsandbacon.com, where she "builds tools for the future," but there is no posting that directly reference goats, or bacon, or this goatherd with blood on her hands and mouth surrounded by a sunflower .

Bacon is the Muslim prohibition against eating pork meat, the goat is a well-known symbol for Baphomet, and at the final judgment, God separates the sheep, who stay with him, from the goats: 

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne

32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

This drawing now stands as the Face Book header of Asma Mahmood, a Mississauga woman who has been given the task of judging art work that is meant to represent Mississauga's artists. 

I sent an email to the jury group for the Juried Show of Fine Arts:

I find it very interesting that you purport to be a "Mississuagan," i.e. a Canadian, organization, yet your jury is composed of two women (out of four jurors, that is 50% of the jury) who call themselves "Asma" and whose works is posted all over the internet for all to see advocating their Pakistani and Bangladeshi roots, and even presented in their own script and language.

What dies the twitter head of Asma Arshad Mahmood mean? What does that have to do with Canada? Hwo will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what she says on her twitter page?

Why is Asma Sultana's facebook page, and her webpage showing me her work mostly in an Indian language script? What is she saying? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what says about her own "art?" 

You don't even attempt to present yourselves as "multicultural" and instead you have been hijacked by Indians/Pakistani/Bangladeshi who will have their own criteria for judging and critiquing Canadian art and artists.

This is a very interesting, and important, development 

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

By the way, the other two aren't much better.

Fauste Facciponte photographs dolls, which Globe and Mail writer R. M. Vaughn describes thus in a 2011 article "Double Visions and Scary Dolls" (the excerpt is of a screen shot from a pdf file):

 

 

And here is Jay Wilson's Toothpick Mountain

And here is Asma Sultana's twitter page entry, clearly a self-portrait. But what does it say?

And the banner for the show? The background to the banner is what looks like clipped paper collage,

 

whereas it is an acrylic painting, by Elizabeth Elkin, 

who nonetheless paints still lifes and flowers with skill.

Ethiopia's Elections - A Strong and United Ethiopia

[This article was in draft form, originally written on June 24, 2021]

Prime Minister Abiy completed his promised election in Ethiopia, with more than a dozen parties. All that is left is ballot count, and he is the clear winner. 

It was extraordinary. People voted! It was not so much the "vote" but the promise that each person can have his say, and will be part of the collective, national decision. Ethiopians can have their say, is what Abiy said, and delivered. "I have a duty to chose whomever will represent me," said one, who came late after work. 

And one old lady, possibly in her seventies, said: "I came happily, I came happily to choose." And her wishes for Abiy: "May they [this is is a polite, formal, way for saying "he"] live in peace...And let Ethiopia grow, let her live, let her live for us." 

"Thanks be to God," says another women. "May God bless our country, and make it peaceful."

And one man says: "And the results after the election, and until the election results are revealed, then each one of us should protect our country with care, keeping the peace, as we wait for the results."

Each person, in the wisdom of the unsophisticated, simply says that he came because he was given the chance to decide.

But, there is also a unique intelligence of these sincere, and patient people. They have been through so much, and yet they are not bitter. They accepted to come with trust, and faith.

Of course, Abiy's promise is democracy, which, I am sure even he realizes is a symbolic promise, a promise that people can live their lives free from fear.

All those critics, naysayers, and those that put obstacles, whether physical, ideological, or simply diffusing subtly damning words, can now rethink their positions. 

I think that this is a new era for Ethiopia. There are enemies throughout. None of the media reported on this, other than a Reuters report, and BBC-Africa report, which was more vicious than reporting. "You have war and famine in Tigray" says the female Ugandan BBC-Africa reporter, who was sent to Ethiopia for the election. "There is no war, there is no famine in Tigray," tells her the clearly irritated, but patient, Abiy, who knows who these people are and what their agenda is. He waves her off after her persistence, and walks away.

Western countries, i.e. Western liberal countries, completely ignored this. There is nothing from the US or Canada. No well-wishers for Ethiopia - Biden and Trudeau are completely silent. Nothing from England or France (Macron was supposedly Abiy's "buddy" - they are the under-fifties leaders). 

I believe they want him to fail. A strong and united Ethiopia means a strong region, and who wants that? Better war and famine. 

It is fascinating for all these reasons. I think it is a historical moment. And those that wouldn't see it as such, and who put obstacles in its place over these years, shame on them.

In the Beginning

In the beginning:

Kara Walker

Savant from an Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters/AKA The Full-On Mask

2020

It is fascinating to find this image. I wasn't looking for it, but rather found Kara Walker, whom I know as the "cut-out" artists, a black American women - married, by the way to two white men, one she divorced and with whom she has a daughter - who spent her artist's career finding ways to malign white America (and America in general).

Her masked black woman is of course a metaphor for the "muzzling" that whites have done to blacks - her own radical perspective, which she hypocritically holds as she lives her life with those muzzling white men, and as she finds prestige in those very same white-built and white-organized museums, who genuflect to her otherness induced by their centuries-induced guilt for an event that took several hundred years ago, and for which, for all practical purposes - including monetary - they have redeemed themselves.

Still, the unforgiving, and money-grabbing, Walker will have none of this.

The muzzling mask is prescient. This is now happening on a global scale, but through which her own black "brothers and sisters" are suffering the most.

Full-on is what we should expect, metaphorically or not.

Clockwise from bottom left: MacArthur Fellows Ta Nehisi Coates, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jad Abumarad, Kara Walker, David C. Page, Angela Duckworth, Robert Axelrod and Junot Diaz.

[Image Source]

So. How exactly did Walker come up with this mask, an (almost) exact rendition of the mask the American, and Canadian, Sheep, are wearing? All that is left, and as we can conclude, is that the future of the mask is a la Walker. The Full-On.

Above, Kara Walker with daughter Octavia Brugel (image source) from around 2007. 

Brugel appears to be in her very early teens (she was born in 1997), 

and below Brugel with Walke in 2007.

Summer! (Still)

[Photo By: KPA]

Spring!

Spring: Magnolia Tree Flowers - Jubilee Garden, Mississauga

[Photo By: KPA]