Good pic of Coral Beads

Voluntary domestic servitude

How many people are married, with partners, or just to keep a home or family unit working are the hub of order there, being the only one who cooks, cleans, shops, for that unit, without doing so no one else would volunteer or think to offer, how many mainly women are married into this and would leave tomorrow if they hadn't children to love and take care of in the home, I teach my son to clean and cook as he grows up, he needs to provide support in future for his partner. I know many men who support their partners but many who don't even wash a cup up or even take it to the sink. Day in day put the woman goes to work, shops, cooks, returns home to more domestic servitude. All for love of her family.

Road markings

Speech marks said the little boy to his dad.

Coral Beads in exhibition

The bead web is easier to view in person, I never realized how difficult this is to capture on camera, the strands of the web and melted sugar are almost invisible. I used the slate to represent broken homes and movement to and from homes as a trafficked person, books reversed to silence voices of those trafficked, apart from one book called poverty to progress. The web is attached to the window, it spans the length of the alcove around 9'7" in length.

Coral Bead review from a KUWG member

http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/kuwg-joins-working-mens-college-in.html?m=1

Online references for Coral Beads # Human Trafficking #Edo State

Wordpress,com state online:

 (1)‘Coral beads are worn mostly by Edo women from Edo State, Nigeria, they  are symbolic

of power, prestige, wealth, royalty and beauty’, ‘Historically, In Edo symbolism, beads

figured prominently, but the richest beads were made from red corals’

 I will create sculpture, with coral beads threaded on

Randomly and each bead will represent one trafficked person from Edo State.

 Unodc.org state (2) ‘There is a high prevalence of modern day

slavery known as trafficking in persons (TIP) in Nigeria. The menace of TIP came to

light in Nigeria in the 1980s and assumed a centre stage in national and internal

discourse in the late 1990s. Women and children who are the most vulnerable groups are

trafficked internally and externally for economic and sexual exploitation, such as prostitution,

forced labour. Domestic servitude, alms, begging, drug trade, child soldier, forced marriage,

organ transplant etc’. It goes on to state,( ’According to framework of the UNICRI/UNODC

pilot project), the majority of trafficked persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation are

young women and minors from Edo State of  Nigeria’. 

 (raceandhistory.com)

(3)‘Trade between the Portuguese and Benin (Benin City is capital of Edo State) was mainly

in coral beads, cloths for ceremonial attire and great quantities of brass manilas which

craftsmen melted for casting. In exchange for Portuguese goods offered was sugar, tobacco,

spices, coolants, ivory, earthenware, jewellery, artefacts and domestic slaves’.

So hundreds of years this has been accepted by people in certain regions of Nigeria, so my

sculpture is hopefully reflecting not just the subservience, attitudes, economic problems, lies

and tricks surrounding Human Tafficking, I want viewers to also think of our own

responsibility, ask if we as a country are complicit, do UK government trade  impact of

regions of Nigeria in a detrimental way,today and historically?  What can we do via our own

councillors and MP’s to  help trafficked people in our society, can we do more to help people

 like Huseina, will trafficked people one day feel they can trust our government, will support

groups be able to fully protect  and offer a safe haven and support without fear of victims

losing a chance to live happily in the UK.

Statement of Intent

Final Project    CORAL BEADS

Statement of Intent by Helen Mandley

As an artist in 2014, I intend to record my interpretations of  human nature,  our impact on each other and my awareness of movements be they right or wrong in the world. 

I want to tweak a thought and arouse a curiosity for the viewer to explore further. 

My final piece is called ‘Coral Beads’ and I am addressing Human Trafficking with first hand knowledge of someone and from a historical and cultural standpoint .

I was with my friend Huseina, who herself has been trafficked as a domestic slave  and witnessed her Aunties attitude when leaving church one day, with the male cousin ready to escort  Huseina home. When I saw her next, I asked why her Aunty was so rude to her, she explained that’s her upbringing, it’s wrong in her culture to answer back, especially as ‘A Girl’

From this point there was an unfolding of her own upbringing in Agenebody, Edo State East, Capital Benin City, Nigeria, about her home life and her struggles and experience of domestic servitude with initial oblivion to her own trafficking,  her husband at home as well as the impact on her two young children leaving their father and her beloved  mother for what she believed was a better life, knowingly entering the UK illegally and bound by cultural duty to her ‘Aunty’, being escorted by her ‘male cousin’ only to come home day after day to more cooking, cleaning, physical and verbal and mental abuse, this all happening  a few streets away from my own home.

Relating to Context is Everything and my own bag of items I have a connection with, I asked Huseina  if she would share with me any items she may have that she holds dear. She showed me her mother’s Coral Beads, given to her when she left Edo State. Cherished by my friend and  kept in a safe place, Huseina described to me how they offer her protection by keeping her close to her mother.   My question is, ‘how women and girls can be adorned in coral beads as a sign of prestige, beauty and status but they as humans can also be traded?’

From this discussion I felt the need to use Coral Beads in a sculpture, threading them one by one in groups or singular to represent a trafficked person from Edo State, the research I did fell into place, coral beads being used as a currency for over 500 years as well as other goods and among that Edo people traded for domestic servitude with Portuguese traders dating back to the 1500s.  This shows me the cultural acceptance Huseina has spoken of and how complex an issue this is, almost supporting my idea of a net or web like structure referring to trapping people.

Relating to Romuald Hazoume and the Cargo Land work he has done with containers, I wanted to relate to Human Trafficking. I also revisited Man’s Cloth by El Anatsui at the British Museum for inspiration as well as observing again the Benin statues of warriors and rulers adorned in coral. A colleague shared Kara Walkers ‘A Subtlety’ of sugar sculptures of African American slaves and showing them in an Egyptian Sphinx setting, I found this inspiring and have also used sugar, melted to separate each bead, sugar is also a local crop in Edo State east and was amongst the goods traded with the Portuguese in the 1500s.

I feel as an Artist I am developing my sculptures and find this an area that I will work in again and again, I love the idea of on site installations such as Phileda Barlowe’s work at Tate Britain and I wish to install Coral Beads in an alcove of the library for the college exhibition amongst books of trade and economy, similarly to Andy Goldsmith’s sculptures in natural surroundings.

(1)   http://tinkjewellery.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/coral-beads-and-the-popularity-among-the-nigeria-culture

(2)   http://www.unodc.org/nigeria/en/prevention-of-human-trafficking.html

(3)   http://www.raceand history.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl?md=read;id=2313

Ana Mendieta By Helen Mandley (Essay)

Ana Mendieta

By Helen Mandley

Viewing the Ana Mendieta ‘Traces’ exhibition at The Hayward Gallery has led me

to explore the enigma of this Artist’s work further. I was initially struck by these

burnt wood sculptures of maybe 5ft tall, I felt I was witnessing the remains of a

dark secret, ritual markings, some delicate and feminine in leaf like shapes, some

raw and crude, some placed apparently random appearing as how nature had

drawn them. Were these artefacts privy to a set of people who are practicing black

magic?

Maybe these were the remains of natural phenomena. These feelings glued me to

the spot with wonder and a sense of fear as to what to expect from further work.

Looking at the notes on the piece, I read about the Cuban roots of Mendieta and

her interest in Santeria, Santeria provided both a way of reconnecting with her

homeland and a spiritual system- earth based, featuring female deities or (orishas)

as well as male and female priests (santero and santera) in keeping with her

feminist concerns. –Women, Art And Society, Whitney Chadwick, Fourth Edition

Moving onto her photos of her body and body outlines in various environments

was equally exciting, there was one of her body covered in feathers, was this self

harm? Did she feel she needed to be punished? Was she wishing to be a bird and

fly to somewhere far away? Maybe she just wanted to be free and in disguise? All

these questions came to me. To me, I felt as though she wanted to run away and

reconnect with her real homeland, she felt displaced in the shell she was

naturally in at that point. Her body outline in sand, from the Silueta Series, Red

Flowers silueta on sand, Mexico 76, reminded me of corpse ashes being tossed

into the ocean, a trace of the human has remained just floating out to sea where

the water and elements may take it; this sombre photo stirred a sense of a lost

soul, someone trying to get out their shell, to fly in the wind or sail in the sea like

a discarded flower from one shore to another, yet beautiful and gentle without

harm to anyone, just being, without identity, settling wherever the wind and sea

takes it, maybe this is how she felt at that exact moment.   Very well put by

Blocker, cited by Mariana Ortega in an essay ‘Exiled Space, in between space:

existential spatiality in Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas Series’, “By engaging the

contradictions of identificatory practice relative to the female, the primitive, the

earth, and nation, Mendieta occupies the discursive position of exile, and she uses

this position to produce in us a sense of the uncanny”

and

“Geographies and their signification thus emerge not as the site of secure and

coherent identities but rather as those disruptive interventions in the historical

narratives of culture”  Rogoff- The Discourse of Exile

Equally beguiling is ‘Grass Silueta, Iowa,78’, this has an ephemeral quality, just

capturing an outline of a body in the long grass, reminding me of days as a child

walking in the countryside, feeling or believing to have caught a glimpse of

someone or something beside me in a field, hearing a whisper of the wind or

snap of a twig underfoot and turning to see the grass stand upright as though

someone had just walked amongst it. Grass Silueta conjured up the stories I

heard as a child about ‘The Bogey Man’, I suspect used in The Fens to keep

children from straying too far, also the stories I have heard about Obeah or Ju Ju

from my Caribbean friends, about a man with horses hooves walking around

 fields and forests in St Lucia, scaring local people who believe they have seen

him. Much like the rest of the Caribbean there is always a tale to tell about a local

‘Bogey man’ or ‘Cloved footed man’ or such other superstitions. Caribbean

culture is steeped in such tales and no one is considered silly to believe them, it’s

within the local folklore of each island, I think Mendieta was linking ‘Grass Silueta’

to Cuban folklore here as the Grass Silueta photo showed her own silhouette

being removed from somewhere and a trace remained, giving the viewer a ghost

like sense, I think a glimpse into her psyche. 

Looking at her sand drawings was less interesting, to me they were rather like

doodles on a notepad, although I haven’t explored the significance these have

artistically to her work, they were quite child-like and playful. Maybe these are

Santeria or Cuban symbols, but unlike her other work they did not capture my

imagination as much, as it did not feel as though Mendieta had taken as much

time and care to produce.

Her film ‘Traces’ had a metamorphosis message to it. Her silhouette was again

transformed, she became a butterfly then finally a devil like creature through a

process of growth, light and fire, like a re-birthing. Fascinating to watch, the

message was once again about life and death, how quick it can come, about

beauty, demons, identity, freedom, loss and regaining something. The sense that

we all struggle with these issues spoke to me directly whilst watching.

Even her photos with male facial hair appear playful, yet they also have this

seriousness about them, female artists during the 70s and 80s were struggling to

find their place, I think this is a statement about what it was to be a man,

sexuality, women and men in society at that time! Also about male power over

women and the presence of a man. Whilst  I consider this a tongue in cheek

female transvestite expression, I think at the time these photos would’ve been

quite shocking to the world, I like to imagine this issue would’ve been explored

further had she had lived.

Looking at the images of her bruised, splattered and smeared in blood, I found

these disturbing to view, as though I was really encroaching on her personal

space, who had done this? Was this planned? I questioned the intention of this

work, why show such morbid images? However, afterwards I understood her

reasons for producing these photos. In the 70s and 80s feminism was still

emerging out of infancy and this was a very powerful statement about domestic

violence, women were still fighting for their rights in western society as well as

the Art world. It is interesting to me, as I consider myself a feminist as well as

someone that wishes to explore taboos; I wondered why I was reticent to view

these photos of a battered woman? What ignorant bubble was I actually living

in? Was it past my viewing threshold to witness this type of pain? Are these not

the borders that I also wish to cross as a Fine Artist?  For instance my photos of

homelessness were challenging for some people to look at yet this work

challenged me internally, whilst  the viewer may find these images unpalatable, I

know that this is what I would like to do. Maybe I am a little afraid, maybe the

arousal of dormant memories of events I would rather forget frightens me, but

the truth is there for us all to see and do something about, or ignore and remain

in our own little bubble pretending that everything is ok. I think these photos

have become some of my favourite pieces now, because this epitomizes the artist

and society laid bare.

Mendieta has helped me address my own demons, angels, consciousness, my

past and more importantly the present. For me art is not about the pretty

landscape or the beautiful girl, it’s about the purging, the exposure of taboos and

she has inspired me to explore this further.

Some of her work has reminded me of my own interest in what has been left

behind, my video of rain water running down the road captured something many

ignore, the light reflected on oil spills and the photographic work on

homelessness and the footprints left behind, as I tried to entice viewers to look

and ponder what had occurred in those spaces. Throughout the exhibition I felt

her with me, she succeeded so brilliantly as an artist, I really connected with her,

her  work showing a residue of what has been has aroused a need within me to

unearth  more taboos about the hidden in my own work.

“My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has

been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my

adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition

between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and

becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my

roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage” Ana Mendieta

“Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean”  Bob Dylan

References

Books:

Women, Art And Society, Whitney Chadwick, 4^th Edition

Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings edited by Griselda Polloc

Online:

http://www.academia.edu/223819/Exiled_Space_In-Between_Space_Existential_Spatiality_in_Ana_Mendietas_Siluetas_Series, Essay by Mariana Ortega

Pirandellic

Pirandellic, a play within a play..explaining to a friend today about my difficulty constructing Coral Beads, from tangles, to assembling and getting entangled by a fish hook in my back, I said I felt some connection with being trapped, frustrated, but nothing close to bring trafficked but I still in my mind felt the emotion, even threading the beads and dropping them, recollecting a bead and threading, as a trafficker I was gathering the people..strange how an object for what it represents to an artist takes on it's own life. My friend said a word that described to me this occurrence 'pirandellic, a play within a play' whilst viewing my Coral Beads today.

Chiharu Shiota

http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm?event=ShowArtist&eid=118&id=583&c=Current

Coral beads ready for show

Took down my coral beads today with advice of Leo the technician, hw advised me to fold section by section in paper, taPE beads to a1 paper between sheets of paper, it fitted into my college portfolio case and should be ok to install in library Wed or Thursday. Kept bottles water full and broken slate, all to be installed next week, not putting necklaces on it, will use them on floor I think..maybe?will thin hair and nets out, found fake grass may use that and will add more melted sugar in situ.

Coral beads crit today

Installation of coral beads

Writing for final project Coral Beads

Lots of writing up my notes on the final project meant working until 4.30am today ready for crit today. I had so many notes and wanted to include everything, even my own claustrophobia assembling and failing with materials and installing it. I've learnt in the last 24hrs preparation with writing is key to the completion of the process and success. Regathering previous thoughts by note taking and recording will prepare me much better in the future on BA and as a practising artist. The tutors are as always right.

Coral beads#7

Structure covered with melted sugar and objects such as hair, netting, loose thread, fishing hooks have been added, not at this moment sure about the necklaces, think I will remove tomorrow before my crit..
Tonight rewriting my statement of intent just to be sure I've covered all areas. As expressed today by tutors of utmost importance to capture our thoughts research, gallery visits, influential artists and our processes of success and failures fully in our reflective writing and our blogs and our statement. Looks like a late night again.

Coral beads #6

Melting sugar at college day before crit, used my portable camping gas and gas ring, only one burn and spillage. White sugar melts to same consistency as brown sugar. Used bottom of paint brush to dab splodges onto structure to seperate beads and set sections on web. Since the 1500s sugar has been traded in Edo state with the Portuguese for coral beads.

Coral beads tangled

After transporting to college, attempting to hang, got in a tangle and had a meltdown, embarrassed I got angry with it , on reflection, I felt claustrophobic, I felt the energy of the topic, people trafficking in my hands, which is a good experience. Can't imagine what they feel daily, my,friend felt trapped, worthless, a mute..now she's out that her life can begin over.

Coral beads #5

I melted sugar to use as glue to separate beads, left of pic is the seperate beads, strands are created which adds to the web effect, im very happy with this medium, kudos to kara walker for her subtlety sculptures. Sugar cane is grown in Edo State.

Coral beads#4

Main outline for web, will be stitched to a sheet and transfered to college tomorrow, melt sugar to stick to fishing line and seperate beads, a final line to web needs to be added going round, will be free hanging amongst books in library and reused containers such as milk bottles filled with water will be used to weight bottom strands, also fish hooks and hair tangled up in there some where

Coral beads #3

Another attempt using strong fishing wire, working in my hallway

Coral beads

House made from reeds and materias like sugar cane husks

Coral Beads#2

Work in progress, having trouble with tension using copper wire, considering using red fishing line and setting in a frame to work and create a better web shape, will also hang fishing hooks and weight at the bottom with containers such as old milk bottles filled with melted sugar or granules of sugar. The web will also have melted sugar on it as sugar cane is grown in Edo state. The relation of sugar and sticky excretion spiders use to trap their prey. The containers are used over and over in Edo state, there's always a need for them.

Coral beads

Very excited about my final project on people trafficking. Started threading beads onto silver plated copper wire today for a big spiders web, hopefully it will also take on a fishing net feel, will be placing  fishing hooks and placing feathers and other objects that could be captured say in barbed wire.