Unveiling Our Maiden Migration

I discovered this incredible book of maps at the home of a friend.
It is an awesome source of endless inspiration.

The moment of truth had arrived. The boards were blank. As an experimental artist who refuses to plan everything in advance, putting the first mark on the painting surface is a moment of huge discomfort. I know that whatever I put there will be “wrong.” It is simply the tiny “bindu” spot from which everything else will evolve. Knowing it will later have to be changed, I must nevertheless mar the surface and initiate the creative process. It takes courage to err!

I had already spent two months in preparation and still I did not know what I would be putting on the configuration of boards that will represent our human migration from Ethiopia into Southwest Asia. Two months of preparation? Whatever for?

The answer is two fold. First, shifting from one region of the world to another is almost like beginning a whole new body of work. It is so overwhelmingly complex that I hem and haw and fiddle with odds and ends, procrastinating as I attempt to remember how I started on the last region. Secondly, it takes enormous research in order to begin conceptualizing a creative way to express multiple levels of information and emotional content.

Maps reveal the ever-changing human perception of the world.
They are a very old form of art. 

Overcoming Inertia

There are to be twelve alcoves when Eve’s Imprint is completed. So far I have done three of these: African Origins, My Ancestral Journey, and Southeast Asia (completed this winter). I began the Southeast Asia paintings in 2012, but interrupted them to do pieces for My Ancestral Journey and one of the eight environmental banners that will accompany the twelve alcoves. After over three years of toil, finally completing Southeast Asia meant I had to decide what region of the world would be next.

My final piece for the Southeast Asia alcove of Eve's Imprint is
Ecosystems Stick Map, a riff on a navigation tool used in the Marshall Islands.

Since 17% of my DNA matches that of persons in South West Asia and I lived in India (the eastern edge of SW Asia) for two years, I figured that gave me a leg up on some of the other regions of the world. Three India paintings in my Pilgrimage series had mined my personal experience of living in rural villages. This alcove of Eve’s Imprint would require that I put my personal experience into a larger historical and geographic context.

I like to use maps from Doctors Without Borders because they help me
distinguish contemporary countries. Here I delineated South West Asia.

In May I began studying maps and rereading material on the migration of homo sapiens beginning around 73,000 BC. I checked out a world atlas from the library and copied maps of various regions with which I will be working, using this exercise to work myself back into the overall project. I also checked out resource materials on SW Asia, including a video on the disappearing Bengal Tiger.

The Bengal Tiger is on the list of endangered species.

What if?

Ideas began to percolate. What if I focused this region, the first migration site out of Ethiopia, on the environment and animals they met there? What if I used a large tiger head to represent India, elephants for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh; and camels for Saudi Arabia? What if I made the large tiger head out of old maps of the area?

Soon I was enlarging maps of the region to figure out the sizes and configuration of boards that could best represent its geographic contours. Not only do I love maps, I see using them in my compositions as a means of lending veracity to what I am presenting. That is also why I plan to use images of art and artifacts from the region. I’m not just making this migration stuff up; there is real scientific research (genetic, geographic, archeological, anthropological, environmental, and geological) that has produced this contemporary understanding.

After experimenting with a variety of board sizes and configurations,
I arrived at this arrangement. The smaller boards are for islands.

Once I had the configuration of boards plotted and had put gesso on them, I backtracked to do some research on Persia (present day Iran), since that culture had a big impact on India. When I found some marvelous photos of ancient art of the region, I had the idea of creating a multilayered area of 4” x 4” artifact tiles on the Himalayan area of the India board. These could dramatize the power and impact of the Himalayas on the Indian subcontinent. (More on this in a later blog.)

I began creating a “test” model of the large tiger head that will cover most of India. Meanwhile I perused a book on Persian potsherds that I found at the Oriental Institute in Chicago. I thought I might use transfers of the potsherds for Iran (Persia). To test this, I tried laying photocopies of some of these on the Iran section of the Arabian/Iranian board. Oops, not so sure.

My first test model of creating the tiger head out of old maps of India.
Enjoy this funky version; the final one won't look like this!

Moment of Truth Arrives

Once I had a “test” model of the tiger’s head, I faced the moment of truth – actually making a mark on one of the boards. I decided that the parts of India that would not be covered by the tiger’s head should be the red-orange that you see everywhere – in clothing, architecture, magazines, films, and all paraphernalia. It’s a good color because India has a very fiery culture. But before I mixed and painted that color, I thought that if the tiger is made out of “positive” map images, then it should be surrounded by the sort of “negative” images that one gets by doing transfers. Plus the porous texture of transfers gives a sense of being from a long time ago.

This led me to an Internet search for ancient cave art of India that I had stumbled onto in an article in Wikipedia. I was thrilled when I found just such images. Of course these were small, so off I went to FedEx Office to make color enlargements for my transfer process. With these in hand, I confronted my insecurity about the best way to do the transfers. Do I put the gel on one surface or both? Do I put it on with a brush or a pallet knife? How long do I let it set before I remove the paper backing? Am I going to use a wet toothbrush to remove the paper or roll it off with my bare fingers?

Just do it, LiDoña! Stop procrastinating and do something! Be willing to be wrong! Nothing is final but you have to start somewhere. Ok, I’ll start with Pakistan and Afghanistan because being on a smaller board the transfer will be easier to work with. Fussing and fiddling as I tried to remember how I had done this in the past, the first transfer went down and I left it to dry.

This is a transfer of Indian cave art depicting animals I do not recognize.

Unveiling Our Maiden Migration

As I was sorting through my Indian cave art images, now spread all over the studio floor, a thought crossed my mind. If there is ancient cave art in India, I wonder if there is in Iran? Wouldn’t that be more genuine in terms of the time period of the first migration than potsherds from several thousand years later?

Sure enough, an Internet search turned up prehistoric Iranian art. Well, what about Saudi Arabia, the first stop on the migration path out of Africa? More searching brought up Arabian rock art and Pre-Islamic stone writing. Even more exciting was the discovery of the Palaeodeserts Project begun in 2013. This international multi-science research project is turning up evidence of a Green Arabia that comes and goes when the climate changes. The first homo sapiens to leave Africa and set foot in Arabia found a land of lakes, grasses, and animals. It's hard to imagine that now but as we are beginning to experience the effects of climate change on agriculture in California perhaps we can empathize with the flux and flow of flora and fauna in Arabia in response to shifting levels in the water table.

Scenic countryside in Hail, Saudi Arabia. This is to become part of the
largest eco-park in the Middle East.

My wall of ignorance about the migration into SW Asia was beginning to crack. I was beginning to generate a variety of ideas about how to symbolize our maiden migration. Back in the studio, my excitement carried me through disappointment with the first cave art transfer I did for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, what I had put down was wrong in relation to what I tentatively visualize for the India board. It has to be removed. But I’m ok with that because it did its job. A trickle in the creative process has started to flow.

For more about Eve's Imprint go to my website www. lidonawagener.com.