Walking The Earth” is a visual art installation of mixed media works by artist Lourdes Bernard which will be on view during her Open Studio at the Erdman Center at Princeton Theological Seminary on April 22, 4-7pm. The works were completed  during Bernard’s OMSC artist residency at PTS. The installation of figurative works also includes a series of non-representational drawings inspired by the planet Saturn. The images share overlapping themes and they are in conversation with  each other . The installation “Walking The Earth” primarily centers women as individuals and within a community. All the works reference literature and language as narrative inspiration and as visual media where text is sometimes incorporated into the work. The title of the installation comes from the piece “Walking The Earth As Though I Have the Right to be Here” from this James Baldwin quote:

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

This particular work is a “Rückenfigur” (“figure from the back”) and invites the viewer to experience the figure’s perspective, emotional state and journey as she walks on her path with her back towards the viewer. This allows the viewer to be a participant and as a visual device it creates a mysterious tension. The back of the figure also becomes a portrait that embodies a shared and universal experience and this is again echoed in the small self-portrait “Portrait Of the Artist as a Young Girl”.

The subject’s gaze (or lack of gaze) is a common thread and in “Nou bèl. E nou la!” the women are fully frontal and face the viewer reclaiming and redefining the poignant vernacular call and response greeting from Haitian women Nou Led, Nou La! which was born out of hundreds of years of colonial, authoritarian and ongoing U.S. imperialist oppression.Here the greeting “How are we today, Sister? We are ugly, but we are still here” is changed to “We are beautiful but we are still here.” Showcasing this history is an  urgent invitation to alter the course of US policies that continue to deepen the suffering in neighboring Haiti today where the US is poised to invade yet again.

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

“The Congregants”, a triptych, and “Senna The New Theologian” are part of an ongoing portrait series titled “The Icon of Reality” inspired by these lines from the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” :

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces"

The portraits are indexical of Divine creativity and its human expression. They are based on sketches made over several hours when each of four OMSC visiting scholars sat and posed for a portrait. The final portrait is a composite pen and ink drawing based on these sketches and made over several weeks as a daily ritual.The process-driven portraits are not idealized and rather reflect an authentic and real humanity as icons that express the sitter’s sacredness here and now.Three of the four scholars provided a prayer that they hold dear and are now written on the portraits in their native language. Together three of the scholars form a triptych and become “The Congregants”. In “Senna the New Theologian” the subject and the pictorial language are in dialogue with the early Christian art of Byzantium Africa, particularly in Ethiopia where Senna is from. “Senna the New Theologian” reminds us that Christianity first flourished in Africa and its earliest and deepest roots are in that continent.

Ringscapes

I saw the planet Saturn for the first time during a visit to the Peyton observatory at Princeton University.The direct viewing experience was impactful. When the astrophysicist at Peyton explained that Saturn’s rings were not just made of gas but were in fact full of shattered moons, comets, “asteroids made of chunks of rock, ice, and metal left over from the formation of our solar system”, some as big as mountains, I was moved to make the “Ringscape” series. These pen and ink drawings depict Saturn’s rings as an imaginary cosmic landscape and a laboratory full of mysterious and unknown forms, continually emerging and in constant motion. The visits to Peyton also inspired “Saturn, Plan View” a painting of Saturn without the rings. Several images in this series were made against the backdrop of the genocide in Gaza  and as I worked on these images I found myself returning to Stevie Wonder’s  timeless song “Saturn” again and again.

“We have come here many times before

To find your strategy to peace is war

Killing helpless men, women and children

That don't even know what they are dying for

We can't trust you when you take a stand

With a gun and bible in your hand

And the cold expression on your face

Saying give us what we want or we'll destroy”

The works on view in the Open Studio reflect questions which I grappled with during the residency and in the process of making the images even more questions were raised. This is why the lyrics in “Saturn” ring as true today as they did when they were first released. We need to collectively walk the earth as though we all belong here, and perhaps raising our eyes to look at the stars and planets can help ground us in this singular and essential reality.