TRAVELLER PERSISTS

Negarra A. Kudumu September 2019

“I am interested in the story of who is alive after we burn the world.”

- Rajni Perera 

Rajni Perera’s Traveller arrives in the midst of the primary most salient event affecting the world today: large-scale environmental destruction. These events are forcing an increase in the rapidity of climate change that is hastening Mother Earth’s next massive climactic event. This is evidenced by the burning of rainforests in the Amazon, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola, as well as the melting of the Icelandic glacier, the first the country has lost to climate change. In North America, the southwestern dessert is at its hottest and the Gulf of Mexico is abnormally warm in late spring. Hurricane season is starting sooner in the Caribbean, lasting longer, and causing more damage in areas not accustomed to such extremes. Typically, rainy regions like the Pacific Northwest are increasingly drought ridden. 

Life in the 21st century is the stuff of science fiction yet our now is not the far-off future. Only half a century ago, this future was but a kernel in the imagination of any science fiction writer. The arrival of Traveller is an abjectly exquisite foreboding: the dizzying reality of a future we cannot plan for because we are already in it. Neither is it a future we can accurately imagine because the more it unveils itself, the more we become victims of it. With Traveller, Perera has birthed power figures: complete universes each with their own expertise and domain. Traveller is the evolutionary mandate descended from (M) otherworld), which traces the origins of third culture people to an original perfect humanoid that re-emerged to guide its children through the trials and tribulations of earth bound life. It also incarnated with the energetic imprint of Afrika Galaktika, which centres black and brown female bodies as sites of power and resistance to the trappings of colonialism and oppression. Traveller emerges as hints of that which will remain, en perpetuum, after Mother Nature has completed her regeneration. 

Continuing her investigations into the lived experiences of third culture people imprinted into the contemporary moment, living within diaspora, simultaneously indigenous and globalized, Perera’s travellers are energetic embodiments of beings who have survived the third culture and who in the midst of Mother Earth's inevitable regeneration, have evolved out of a survival modality into thrive mode. Through an intentional, communal pooling of emotional, material, intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic resources, and by creating new pacts and agreements with Mother Earth, third culture people, using the traveller power figures cum vessels as their foundation, are staking their permanent claim for life after Mother Earth's imminent regeneration. This claim is important because it marks a wholesale transformative transition from the margins to the center. People who arrived to the third culture2 as political refugees, migrant workers, unwanted minorities, and trafficked humans have paid their dues and put in work to make more, not simply make do. Traveller is simultaneously the offering and the confirmation that their work has taken root, is in motion, and will withstand the literal and figurative global warming. 

A Look Back to Look Forward

There is a historical, spiritual, and environmental context within which Traveller exists and presses forward. As people do, even when they migrate under extreme duress, they bring with them their spiritual beliefs and their language, (not solely the trauma of being separated from their sources) which exists in an odd, at times inequitable, balance within the third culture. These ways of being mitigate the stressors of being othered in the third culture and support a connectedness to indigeneity. These beliefs reference times and worlds so ancient and so magnificent that we rationalize them as impossible. Curiously, belief when coupled with the passage of time yields realms of possibility that require only patience and intention to be cultivated. A cursory look at history reveals the repetitive nature of boom and bust economic cycles, fecund harvests followed by droughts, plagues, and insect infestations. Further inspection reveals that Mother Earth has a traceable history of de-glaciation, followed by post-glacial rebound, and eventually - as in tens of millennia later - ice ages. These systems reveal a time where there were barely any humans and it shows us what happens when there are too many humans everywhere. 

The technologies that accompany these systems unveil a brute power that can be used for generatively but also for extractive purposes. Traveller did not emerge out of a void; rather, it was conceived because of the intertwining of an observable set of environmental and social conditions that eventually fomented the precise habitus where it could thrive. It came from distinct places, distinct peoples, and has always been observable to those who want to know that other worlds exist and can be made. Unsurprisingly, these beliefs stem from systems that are rooted in nature and a respect for life. Traveller’s emergence at this moment is precisely Perera’s push for us to dispose of marginality and singularity and the reductionist effects these tools had and continue to have on third culture and related peoples. In disposing of that which exists only to reduce, one can be centred in the now and begin a process of re-embodying and remembering as sovereign. In a state of sovereignty, one does not serve any purpose that is not self-determined. Sovereignty is generative and subsequently propelled from the interior outward and exists, at least for a time, in an opaque, generative space that is not to be consumed by the third culture. It is only at this moment of dispossession, that we can begin to identify real possibilities for a life where difference does not connote systematic reduction cum destruction. 

“Thought of self and thought of other here become obsolete in their duality. Every Other is a citizen and no longer a barbarian. What is here is open,

as much as this there. I would be incapable of projecting from one to the other. This-here is the weave, and it weaves no boundaries. The right to opacity

would not establish autism; it would be the real foundation of Relation, in freedoms.”3 

Aesthetica and Esoterica

New in this body of work is a profoundly rich palette reminiscent of all the colors found in the center of the oldest, uninhabited forests, the highest altitudes of the sky, and the deepest depths of the oceans. The travellers are very squarely in and of the natural world and reflects an identity that is rooted in a reverence for and deference to nature as that which gives and sustains life. Like its antecedents4, these power figures eschew being the subject of the viewers’ gaze. They are primarily concerned with that which they gaze upon and into - to the point of becoming meditative. That we, the viewers, gaze upon them and create our own subjective, self-referential meaning matters significantly less than the interiority of their experience, which hews their intent and gives them direction. 

While gender is not at the forefront of this visual discourse, the aesthetic and conceptual components of these works point succinctly towards the feminine. As in The New Ethnography, Perera delivers a vision of the feminine that is whole, bold, brimming with power, but intensely aware of how, where, and when that power should be used.5 Smooth, stretched, circular movements form bodies that appear to float while seated. Others hover drone like, while standing against the lunar illuminated horizon. The travellers’ vestments are intricately adorned garments - armour if you will - that upon closer inspection mimic shapes and patterns visible in nature. A double vision occurs simultaneously. There is the figure in its integrity - sleek, seductive, and sibylline – but there is also the aura surrounding the figure, which depending on the traveller could be a merging of human with reptilian, floral, or insect qualities. These attributes, serve not just to distinguish the travellers from one another but also rather to communicate to its kin who they are and what their particular speciality is. These travellers are multi-directional beings in that they move in and out of the natural environment at will. Living at or in the water, forest, or mountains with the same measure of ease with which they live among their people. This dual existence is precisely why they are equipped to sustain themselves, and their ilk through the burn of regeneration into Mother Earth’s next climactic phase. 

The work titled “Peaceful Cobra” depicts a sleek and tall figure whose back is turned and looking at something in the distance that only, it can see. The refusal of an external intrusion on its peace is a defining characteristic of Traveller, particularly this one. However, in thinking back to the utility of opacity, what appears to be peace, from our perspective may really be preparation for attack. Cobras, when they perceive an attack, rear upright and produce hoods. This is a sign to any potential attacker that they have a limited amount of time to retreat before the cobra strikes. In this reading, “Peaceful Cobra” is a peacekeeper securing the safety of its people through strategically executed defense mechanisms. 

Perera has incorporated sculpture and textile into this exhibition in the form of eight wearable objects she has named “Rings of Truth”, as well as three pollution masks formed from leather and cotton fabric. The “Rings of Truth” are elongated finger adornment cum weaponry reminiscent of talons belonging to nocturnal birds of prey. Amongst the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, birds of prey, namely owls and vultures, with perilous talons are associated with the women’s society known as Ìyàmi Àjé. This society is responsible for keeping order within Yoruba communities and when order is disrupted, the Ìyàmi Àjé restore it by meting out extremely harsh justice. Appeasement is executed by only the most experienced priestly devotees; however, even if appeased, once they decide to act, they will stop only once they have completed their charge. If people are to survive a massive event of global scale such as climate change, inevitably protecting one’s self and defending one’s place becomes a necessity. While some might observe an inherent violence in “Rings of Truth”, I offer that it is a mechanism for ensuring justice and ensuring the traveller's survival. Every being has its mode of protection. Third culture people have been denied the right to protection intentionally by the third culture. Perera's "Rings of Truth" are merely another tool in the traveller's toolkit to ensure its longevity beyond the forthcoming environmental cataclysm. It is a nod to ancient shamanic belief systems – beliefs held by many third culture people still, to this day - where man and spirit are bound up and thus, and support each other in their earthly and other worldly engagements. 

The pollution masks are illustrative of a contemporary reality with significant implications for human survival. The primary social environment of the third culture person is the city: immense, sprawling urban centers with an excess of people living in close proximity, all of whom move back and forth, throughout the city to carry out their lives. The resultant daily output that comes from living amongst throngs of people manifests most readily as smell. Be it garbage, underground transportation, or human or industrial waste, the assaults on our senses and, by extension, our lungs, are palpable and have observable effects on human wellness. From the point of view of Traveller, the mask is an efficient filtering tool that protects the lungs without hindering an olfactory awareness of its surroundings. In the world that will exist subsequent to Mother Nature's re-generation, it is invaluable to consider the nose as a tracking tool that can identify where one is and where one must go in order to survive and thrive. 

Reflection

For, at least, the better part of eight years, Rajni Perera has created visual discourses that envision a world where people like herself, who live out the triple entendre of third culture, propel towards a freedom of their choosing informed by Mother Earth's pulsations. Traveller is Perera's most stark assertion and depiction of what the world will be in times now and forthcoming. There is an audacity to Traveller that marks an organic departure from previous works but stands steadily on its own uncategorized and irreducible. 

It has arrived in this moment with elegance and calm, bursting with power, and reflective and representative of those who will move through the fire of regeneration and remain here. Traveller is part sentient being part living universe contained within ornately designed superhuman vessels equipped to protect and propel its people forward on the long trip beyond the far reaches of the world we currently know. It is a cenotaph in honour of those who commit their lives to creating persistent lineages and legacies where the priority is irreducible freedom. 

Footnotes

1) Perera’s first solo show at Patel Gallery in 2018.

2) Here, third culture does not refer to third culture people, but rather the sites where third culture people live that identifies them as non-Native. In Perera’s case, third culture refers to Canada and its dominant culture. 

3) Edouard Glissant, The Poetics of Relations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997) 190. 

4 A reference to Perera's earlier series (M)otherworld, Afrika Galaktika, and New Ethnography.

5 Negarra A. Kudumu, "Reading Rajni Perera", C Magazine no 137 (Spring 2018): 41.