The first place I went to upon arrival in Madrid was the Thyssen Museum, literally 20 minutes walk from where I was staying. Thanks to Alajendro Osses for listing the museum as one of the recommended places to visit. I can’t even remember any of the other spots on the list of recommendations. I quickly grabbed something to eat from my packed food and headed out.
I was especially interested in the exhibition that was ongoing looking at colonialism through art. My relationship with museums has been an ongoing struggle for more than a decade. It a complex relationship that cannot be easily defined. One one hand I am deeply bothered by the depiction of the racist history museums have managed to preserve for our consumption today but on the same breath, I am keenly aware of the potential that museums have for helping address those historical injustices to so obvious. It is on such hopeful account that I have continually engaged the North Carolina Museum of History and North Carolina Museum of Art in various engagements.
The North Carolina Museum of Art placed a video of one of my dinners where I talked about the connection between food and art. That short video clip played continuously on the floor of the museum for years. The same museum further invited me to write the interpretation of piece by Christian Mayrs, entitled Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur, Virginia 1838. The piece of art was significant on two accounts. It was the first major piece of work that depicted enslaved African in any celebration scene besides just toiling for their enslavers. To make things even better, I was being paid the average of $1 or $2 per word. But the part is I was able to come up with a food story.
I spent a good part of three hours going through the exhibition on Colonial Art. The theme and the message were loud and clear: art in major museums are an integral part of the colonial project both during the legal period and the de facto period.
One of the pieces I was familiar with but had never seen before was Family Group In A Landscape, Frans Hals 1645-1648. You can see the African boy almost being absent. I was glad to salute him and be a witness. So on my way back to the house, amid a heavy heart, I took a picture of myself with an expensive building as the landscape. But It wasn’t for me but for all those names and absent Africans whose labor created some of the landscape and buildings we enjoy today.
As I walked home with a conflicted heart, I couldn’t help but imagine the enslaved African young man as a symbol of the modern day stomach. Just like the way the young man on the photo disguises the greatest injustice to any group of people, our stomachs are becoming the silent scene of genocide as more and more people consume unjust food just like the wealthy family from Netherlands down pay the injustice that is smack in their face. Many descendants of the enslavement and colonization across the globe are continuing this unequal relationship by consuming food that relegates them to the landscape. Sadly, on that note, the modern landscape is colorblind, though it affects the indigenous communities and people of color the most. Thayũ