Artists in Conversation: I Am Queen Mary

COLLABORATION:

Erinma Adaeze: You both have such amazing things going on in different mediums, and your practices converge but are also different. I'm really curious about how this collaboration came about and what you learned from each other throughout this collaboration for I Am Queen Mary? 

La Vaughn Belle: I think we could say that the collaboration, there's many starting points, of course. I mean, I met Jeanette many years ago. I think it was 2008. I met her at the tail end of my trip. And I think at that time, both of our practices had already begun to turn towards thinking about Danish Colonial History. The Virgin Islands was colonized by Denmark for about 250 years. And both of our practices have kind of started to begin to think about that history at that time, which is how we met. There was an opportunity that arose around 2017, It was the centennial anniversary of the sale and transfer of the former Danish West Indies to the United States. And you might think that anniversary might have been thinking about our 100 years of being American citizens, but it actually focused much more on the rupture in our historical paths with Denmark.

So it was the opportunity for both places to reflect on that. And as those reflections started coming up, both Jeanette and I were approached by a woman by the name of Helle Stenum, who was a Danish professor and researcher. And she pitched to us to do a series: an exhibition between the two warehouses, here in St. Croix and one in Denmark that were linked, but separated. 

Jeanette Ehlers: So she asked us to consider making a monument on each side of the Atlantic, and we both started looking into whatever we had in mind. And then, Helle Stenum wasn't able to raise money for the project. At that point, it was very, very difficult to raise money. The conversation around Danish Colonial History was not really in focus in the Danish media or just in academia really. So she [Helle] had to cancel the show. But both me and La Vaughn, we had just been going very deeply into our respective pieces. And I started raising money, because I was like, "Yeah, this has to happen."

So I started raising money for the project that I wanted to do in Copenhagen, which was to make a counter monument to a sculpture, a replica of Michelangelo's David that is in Copenhagen, outside of the West Indian Warehouse/the Royal Cast Collection. And I had made a performance inside of that building. So I thought when Helle asked us what to do, I thought I wanted to do a counter sculpture to that, taking my starting point with the building and also the performance that I had done called Whip It Good.

Along the way, Helle and I also spoke about why don't me and La Vaughn collaborate? Because La Vaughn was also working on her project in the Virgin Islands for the warehouse over there. So slowly, it all came together, and I was working more on a figure to make that counter sculpture to the replica of Michelangelo's David and La Vaughn was working on her project. But the two pieces or the two artistic practices worked really well together. It was obvious that we should kind of collaborate and connect our practices, because of the nature of our projects.

La Vaughn Belle: I think both of our projects and both of our practices respond very much to our positionality and location in the world. And so for me, living on St. Croix, and St. Croix is an island that was cut up into over 150 sugar plantations. Not just sugar, but plantations, literally just divided up in a very strict grid. That means that it's almost impossible to escape the colonial ruin. All of these sugar mills and gray houses and different structures that deal with that period, they're everywhere.

It starts with the fact that I had a studio that was located in the downtown historic town. And in that studio, I had been renovating it for a few years and had developed a very intimate knowledge, relationship between architecture, narrative history, the built material, the stories inside of them. And one day, I started finding these coral stones, large sections of brain coral that came out of the reefs, and my wondering is, why are these here? I realized that they were actually foundations of other buildings that were on my property. And then, I started doing some research and learned that most of, actually all of the buildings are – the foundations of them are these coral reefs that enslaved Africans would've been forced to source from coral reefs during slavery.

So my approach to the monument was thinking about how I could highlight that. 

ARCHITECTURE & COLONIALITY:

Erinma Adaeze: I would say the duality that you're mentioning, particularly with this idea of combining your two bodies into the image within I Am Queen Mary, has been something that resonated heavily with me as a viewer, but also with the larger community of viewers that we have here at Barnard. So it's really interesting when you talk about the remnants of colonial architecture because of Queen Mary’s presence at the Warehouse, and then later, at Columbia, both places with long histories as colonial institutions.

So I'm really curious for both of you who work within sculpture but also other mediums, how you see your presence responding to architecture, and what type of power that brings into the work as well? 

Jeanette Ehlers: I Am Queen Mary, the first place that it was inaugurated is in front of this warehouse that was built for storing the goods that came from the islands. And it has a deep history in colonialism. So it speaks really directly to that narrative of that building, to that history. And of course, it speaks to that other sculpture that was there. So it is site specific, I would say, for this, for the first one. But then of course, we wanted to expand it also and to make a sister sculpture in the Virgin Islands because we wanted also, again, to bridge the project. But I think it's really beautiful also that the one in Barnard College is there. Even though it's not site specific, it's also a US History, so it just kind of branches out and connects in that sense.

In the beginning, it was very site-specific, and we actually had a lot of challenges, because we didn't know if we could put it there or not, if it could stay there. So we had to rethink the location in Copenhagen. And to be honest, I mean we found other locations, but to be honest, for me it was just a no-go. It just has to be where it is right now, because it's so fundamental for the project. And also that location, yeah, it's just so important.

La Vaughn Belle:I want to respond to that question, but I also just want to put a pin that I really think Jeanette should talk about her body in relation to architecture, 'cause she has a lot of projects and other performance projects where she deals with that. But I would say that, I mean, the first time I went to Denmark in 2008, I thought that it would be like how it is here, where it is impossible to forget the legacy of slavery and colonialism. I mean, it's just literally impossible. Our towns are named after Danish kings. Like I mentioned, the architecture is just everywhere. But in Denmark, if you don't know how to look, it seems invisible, and I found that really interesting.

Jeanette Ehlers: I made a video inside of a mansion in Denmark that is linked to colonial history where I'm dancing. I'm inspired by voodoo and also Kenyan dance. And I do these ritual ceremonies inside, but you can't really see me. So I'm like this ghostly figure because I've manipulated the images. So I have erased myself, but you can still see my shadow in a way. So that speaks really to the architecture or the interior of the building, because you see these flickering things moving around inside the spaces. That was one of my first pieces.

This was me performing in front of the camera, but then I started working more with live performance. And one of my latest performances is called We're Magic. We're real. These walls where me and some other performers are linked to the colonial buildings with our hair. So we have these long, very long cornrows, and we would just do this long durational performance, just walking back and forth for three hours maybe with our hair. And then the hair would speak to, of course, our connection to history, to this coloniality and colonial building, but also the connection between the African diaspora. And then the way that the hair is moving, it actually imitates the waves, like the ocean. We have the sound of the ocean also. And then we have this quote that says, "Until the lion is the historian, the hunter will always be a hero," which is an African proverb that I encountered when I was in Ghana in 2008. So this really speaks directly to buildings and to architecture and to history.

La Vaughn Belle: You did one in St. Croix, I think, in our Government House.

Jeanette Ehlers: Sure, yeah. That was also back in 2008 or '09, where I'm in the government house. It's the ballroom, where they have replicas of the Danish interior design or furniture. I made a video where I'm dancing in that building or in that space as well, to connect the different cultures. You couldn't see me in the actual space, so I was only visible in the mirror. So this non representation and non visibility and all of that, or invisibility.

I AM QUEEN MARY AT BARNARD:

Erinma Adaeze: I think both of you speak about different contexts that unfortunately deal with the same issues, and they're still really looking for way more opportunities for representation when it comes to Black women in public space. Your stories about using your own bodies and how that has brought you a deeper connection to your practice really speaks in so many different contexts. Going back to La Vaughn's point about Columbia University in particular, I think about the replica at Barnard, the way it's been received by students, and I'm really curious to get your thoughts about this. At the end of the last semester, Milstein Exhibitions hosted an event called ‘I Am, We Are’ around I Am Queen Mary Sculpture, where students, staff members, and members of the community were invited to gather and honor the story of Queen Mary.

So this was a space where we invited drummers from Barnard's Afro Cuban dance class. Afro Cuban drummers were performing live, for Queen Mary, welcoming her. We disrupted the space. It's on display in the library, and here we are on the first floor, drumming as loudly as possible. 

The drummers in particular spoke about the resemlance of the sculpture to the Yoruba Goddess Oya, which also exists within Cuban culture, and specifically in the dance and music tradition as a symbol of femininity and power. Students, as they are moving around the sculpture, are bringing in their own Caribbean cultures or African cultures into it as well. The event culminated with students sharing writing or words of poetry, inspired by not only the sculpture, but what we're doing in this space with the sculpture. So it was really, I think, an interesting experience that definitely exemplifies this idea of so many contexts that intersect when it comes to this sculpture. And I think it's something that we really wanted to thank you for bringing onto our campus, because, La Vaughn, I can definitely say that it hasn't changed too much from the time that you were here. I think there's always more work to be done when it comes to representation of Black women, especially within these spaces. So hopefully in sharing that story, it gives you a nugget of how the sculpture continues to live in New York.

Also, it raises the question in my mind of what the future of this type of representation looks like in your eyes. Not only with Queen Mary, but where do you think we're going when it comes to public representations of Black women, especially within spaces that we may argue need it the most?

La Vaughn Belle: Well, I will say one thing about the project, that there's a little bit of a hurt, because if you recall our story, we talked about the fact that there were supposed to be two monuments. And at this stage, there's one [in Copenhagen] and then another version of it in New York, but none in the Virgin Islands. And that has a lot to do with coloniality. That has a lot to do with the fact that Denmark is a wealthy country and was able to put aside resources to make a monument. Whereas in the Virgin Islands, at the time that this sculpture was happening, our hospitals were crumbling, our infrastructure was crumbling. We suffer all the things of what it means to be a modern day economy. Meaning that although we do receive a lot of federal funds from the United States, it's never enough to truly sustain ourselves. And then it creates a system of dependency. So meaning that there was no way we were going to match something like that in the Virgin Islands through our own funds.

I think that issue is something that we've tried heavily to address inside of our project, in the ways that we're still trying to fundraise to make sure that a sculpture is here in the Virgin Islands, in addition to completing the project in Denmark. But in terms of the future of those kinds of monuments or interventions into the public space, prior to making a monument, I think I was very skeptical about monuments. Because typically, at least in this part of the world, they function as a system and tool of the powers of oppression. They usually are glamorizing figures that are very aligned with the interests of the state, and those interests can often be detrimental for people of color.

Jeanette Ehlers: It's artist driven, because we weren't commissioned to do it. We have done everything from scratch. And that's normally not how you do these projects. I mean, in public space, you're almost always invited or commissioned to do something. And it also, again, speaks to coloniality. Two Black women, two Black artists, female artists want to do something, but they have to do everything themselves, and they're not invited. So they have to take that space. 

Erinma Adaeze: I am really interested in this idea of the process and response to the work being a part of the work. I think we're privileged in the sense that we're also still watching this project unfold, and still watching you all continue to push for this project to travel and have some roots within the Virgin Islands. So that's something that is turning what we think about art installation on its head. We are used to the idea that once the work is up, it’s done, and there’s nothing left to do.

In fact, the work is not done. In December 2020, a winter storm severely damaged the monument. The figure was removed and an Augmented Reality version of the sculpture was developed to hold space for the work and activate new dialogues. The artists are currently working towards raising the funds to ensure that this towering monument stays at the entrance to Copenhagen's port for generations to come. Acknowledging the imbalances between colonial powers and their former colonies, the fundraising campaign will leverage the visibility and resources generated by the existing monument in Copenhagen to secure the funds to make a companion one possible in St. Croix. To learn more about the fundraising effort for I Am Queen Mary, visit www.iamqueenmary.com. 

To learn more about the I Am Queen Mary project at Barnard College, read our zine and visit the Barnard Library landing page.