After accusing the Scottish art scene of ignoring people (especially women) of mixed heritage, this Maud Sulter’s posthumous exhibition proved me wrong. Alongside a general move in Glasgow to give voice to those historically marginalised, ‘Passion’ fills the void of mixed race and cultural representation in Scottish art.
Maud Sulter’s (1960-2008) Passion on at Trongate 103, Street Level, between 25 April and the 20 June focuses on the artist’s identity, her Scottish and Ghanaian heritage and creates analogies between herself and famous women.
The exhibition humanises those she photographed, and indeed herself, through her self-portraiture. Significantly the women that are represented are the few that made it into the history books, the ones who associated with men as wives and mistresses. The exhibition successfully initiates a shift towards a reclamation of Sulter’s artistic importance.
Coming myself from a mixed race background the work especially resonated. From being asked at school if I felt at ‘disadvantaged’ and being described as ‘exotic’ more times than I could count, I have always been fascinated with the societal coding of what ‘mixed race’ implies.
Timeless images
Each of Sulter’s pieces transported an under-represented area to the public realm, to art. It’s refreshing in itself to see a life personified in art that has fallen off the fringes of traditional representation. The exhibition transcends histories, is timeless in its meaning. The images and experiences of past cultures, her Ghanaian Grandfather juxtaposed with tartan, past women falling off the radar of historiography and present mixed race converge together as you follow the works. Maud herself is dressed up, painted and rein-acts Marie Antoinette and Baudelaire’s mistress.
Rather than following the traditional narratives of history, Sulter claims it as her own, merging fact, fiction and speculation. This is history from the perspective of a mixed race woman.
A chest of drawers in the middle of the gallery holding original postcards, becomes a metaphysical and physical centre to the exhibition. It not only guides you not round the work, but represent a piece of Maud.
Everyday young women are confronted with images of singular ideal of which they should attempt to fit into. Media and art are both guilty with projecting this singular notion of what is ‘beauty’, exploiting vulnerability and pressuring people to conform. Maud’s work flips these ideas on its head, showing the irrationality of a media ideal today and in the past.
We are all there in Maud’s work, in the collages, the photographs and the poems. I urge everyone to visit this exhibition, to be taken on a journey, to question their own representation in art, in the media and in history.
Leyla Bumbra
‘Passion’ – an exhibition by Maud Sulter is at Street Level Photoworks, 103 Trongate, Glasgow until 21 June. http://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org
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