Content note: Discussion of racism, including historical oppression and slavery.
Sequoia Danielle Barnes presents Everything is Satisfactual at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop this summer – an exploration of how cuteness can mask oppressive structures such as racism and brutality. By finding the balance between cuteness and grotesqueness, Barnes prompts viewers to look deeper at the images that surround us and to question whose narratives we’re being fed.
Your retelling of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby unravels the sinister structures behind objects and stories that parade themselves as ‘cute’ or ‘innocent’. Could you elaborate on how the pieces unpick this?
The story itself is originally folklore about being smarter than your slave master, but also about having humility so that you don’t get yourself hurt. There’s a character called Tar Baby, who is set as a trap for Rabbit by Brother Fox. Tar Baby is holding a piece of food and Rabbit asks him why he doesn’t share. Of course, Tar Baby doesn’t talk as he’s made of tar, so Rabbit ends up hitting him and gets stuck.
The tar in the story represents tarred fences. During enslavement in America, fruit trees were kept behind fences that were covered in tar, and if you were found with tar on your clothes you were assumed to be stealing fruit. The story is a warning, like most folklore. It came with my ancestors when they were taken from Africa and had been told for generations before a man named Joel Chandler Harris took the story and published it. Now you no longer really know who the villain is.
The cuteness comes in to hide that original warning, to present the story in a context where that lesson is no longer relevant. Cuteness distorts reality; it can deform and mask brutality in order to placate people.
Your work is centred around the making process just as much as the final product. Can you elaborate on your process in creating these pieces?
Meaning starts during the artistic process – not after and not once you put a price on it. Once the thing is done, people will do what they want with it, but when you’re making it, you’re bringing something into existence which is really important. Your hands and your tools are creating the context in which this thing lives.
Have there been any moments when your initial meaning has changed through this making process?
It happens all the time. Just because you have an idea, doesn’t mean you have the skills to make it real. You have to be willing to adapt, especially with clay, because it dries and it’s expensive. Sometimes things fall apart, which is just a part of life.
Being patient and preparing for failure is a really big part of working with clay. Sometimes I think that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. If there’s something else you’re good at, just do that, because clay is so hard!
Do you enjoy it?
I enjoy the flow even though it’s hard. I enjoy when things are finished and I get a sense of pride from that, but I’m not sure if enjoyment is the right word. It’s hard on your body but there is a sense of fulfilment that comes from it.
How does your work maintain a balance between introspectively looking backwards to the past, and moving forwards towards a space where these ideologies no longer exist?
I don’t have the ability to make ideologies go away, but I can keep exposing these things. There’s really no future where the past doesn’t bleed into the present and future. These things may seem like spectres of the past haunting us but they are very much real. Many people still collect harmful and racist objects that remind them of their childhoods. There’s a really sinister, convoluted nostalgia for some ‘better time’, but who was it better for?
Is this work significant within a Scottish context?
A lot of my research was looking at imagery from Robertson’s Jam. They had quite derogatory figures on the labels from 1901 till 2001, and that was based in Paisley which is not far from here. That figure is still well-loved, and people don’t understand why it’s offensive at all.
Where does this work place in conversation with the Edinburgh Arts Festival as a whole?
Taking the theme of the festival which is persistence, here I’m refusing to ignore things that have been covered up under the guise of innocence. It’s my job to expose what I call the stains of white supremacy. I’m hoping that at least one person goes away and thinks a bit harder about the things around them.
Image Credit: S.Barnes Useable Several Times series 2023 Embroidery on calico
