Trash Midden of my Mind

Priest King from the ancient civilization in the Indus Valley in present day
Pakistan. Early agricultural settlements going back as far as 7000 BCE
rival those found  in Egypt and Mesopotamia. 

I am sitting on sand-colored ground smoothed almost to a polish by the bare feet of villagers in Kendur, India. A dark indigo sky, almost black, twinkles with a sprinkling of stars. The angular faces of villagers seated in an asymmetrical circle come in and out of view with the swaying of flames in tiny oil lamps placed before them. The flickering light cast by these half-pear-shaped lamps mesmerizes me. A string at the top of the pear feeds oil to the flame. Made of clay, they fit perfectly into the upright palm of a hand.

Earth Spirit rock carving, related to fertility, reveals how
the idealization of feminine power has a long history.

We sway to hypnotic Hindi singing and I pull my green wool sweater close around my neck. The chill I feel is more than the cooling of air after the departure of the sun. There is something strangely archaic about this ritual celebrating the end of the summer harvest, the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil. I have stepped out of the modern world into an annual event that has been going on for generations. My modern world has ended. I have entered another time, an ancient world peopled by my ancestors.

Bhimbetka Cave Art: Bulls and stag in Madha Pradesh Central India,
just north of Maharashtra where Kendur is located.

Halfway around the circle, a woman lights a kerosene stove placed on the ground before her. It is no larger than a man’s bowler hat. She places a pan of water over the flame. When it boils she adds tealeaves, spices, and milk. I am handed a tiny cup the size of a lemon. Sipping chai warms me. I cross my legs and sit back comfortably, lulled by neighborly voices around me.

Bhimbetka Cave Art: Interesting juxtaposition of women and bulls.

A woman leans toward me, holding a large leaf upon which rests a pyramid of small reddish brown balls, shining with syrup. I take one and bite into a confection of milk and sugar with a hint of something that I had tasted in the tea. Later I will learn that this treat is gulab jamun and the spice is cardamom. A sugar rush pops me awake and my eerie feeling dissipates. Lamp flames are burning down. Shadowy figures rustle and begin to disappear into the darkness. Mary gives me her hand to help me rise from the ground.

Bhimbetka Cave Art: I see this image of two men under
an arc as representation of a ritual experience.

All that remains of my first Diwali celebration is a memory in the trash midden of my mind. Within a week I have left my green sweater in a pedicab in Pune, a careless gesture I rue as the days become cooler.

Southwest Asian Alcove of Eve's Imprint

The images presented above are ones that I am working into a build up of 4"x4" panels to represent the Himalayan mountain range. Below the built up area is my Bengal Tiger executed in old maps of India and blow-ups of cave art found in Bhimbetka cave.

Bhimbetka Cave Art: I did transfers of this battle using elephants
 and horses for Pakistan and Afghanistan, below left.

Bhimbetka Cave Art: I used transfers of this elephant and bull image
for parts of India and blow ups for the stripes on my tiger.

I am on a journey that is both deeply solitary and frighteningly communal. I am living amongst the dead, following a trail of blood and fragments of visual culture left by the multiple migrations that have peopled our planet. I am compelled to take this journey and share this story because I have continually bumped into it in accidental encounters in various regions of the world where I lived as a local resident.

Initial placement of 4"x4" panels for Himalayan range north of India

As with most journeys, this one is fraught with surprises and uncertainties. I had no way of knowing that the happenstance leading to being a first year teacher in the Black inner city of Chicago would lead to Eve’s Imprint, a visual art project tracing our human migration from East Africa to all parts of the world. Taking one step at a time, I began catching glimpses of our one Black Mother. Over fifty years of glimpses led me in 2010 to send a DNA sample to the Genographic Project of National Geographic so I could see in concrete terms how I connect to Mitochondrial Eve.

Replacing my funky test tiger with maps to begin the real one.
Starting to visualize the India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan section of Southwest Asia

When I began art work for our one Black Mother, I started with her home in Africa, a continent to which I had traveled at the age of twenty-three and to which I made numerous trips as a grassroots empowerment activist. Six Africa paintings later, I was confused about next steps. Wanting to stay somewhat in my comfort zone, I moved on to Southeast Asia, a region in which I had lived and worked for nearly five years. Three paintings into that region, I paused to do five pieces on my maternal and paternal ancestral paths out of Africa.

Himalayan Mountain Ridge begins to take shape.

I had been searching for parameters and guidelines for this body of work and it was working on my self-portrait that revealed my passion for maps and for working on several pieces that cohere as one larger whole. Bouncing back to Southeast Asia, I did six more pieces. This year I moved on to Southwest Asia, our maiden migration out of Africa. I hoped two years of living in India, the eastern edge of Southwest Asia, would give me an existential basis for the work.

Using tracing paper, I begin making the tiger's head stripes with blow ups of the red cave
 art of two elephants and bull and the nose with a blow up of the ritual performance.

Humans Are Migrating People

Around the world, hundreds of thousands of people are on the move, uprooted by war, malnourished by abject poverty, and fleeing land made infertile by years of drought caused by global warming. The nations toward which they move with hope for a better life find their social systems over taxed and resident populations reluctant to embrace these newcomers.

I glue my tiger onto the board and use an old map of Goa
 for the leg that is in shadow.

This has happened before. Millions of people moved into or out of India and Pakistan when independence brought the birth of two nations. Thousands of African Americans, slave and freeborn, made the arduous trek north during and after the American Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of Protestants fled persecution in Europe, seeking freedom of worship in the new world. The list goes on and on.

Beginning to visualize the connection of the western section
of Southwest Asia to the eastern section.

We are all one global family. We have all descended from one black woman in East Africa, Mitochondrial Eve. All humans alive today share the DNA map of this one woman. All of us are the product of migrations across planet Earth, migrations that began 75,000 years ago when the first homo sapiens left East Africa, following schools of fish and the glimpse of green hills in Yemen.

I change the blue of the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal to a greener
teal color to represent the vegetation upon which the tiger depends.

Our global family, created via multiple migrations, is bound to the earth. Our existence depends upon the fruits of the land. When survival is threatened in one place, we move to another. Over time, the interactions created by one group coming in contact with another lead to new innovations and enriched cultures. But in the immediate moment, migrations are messy, confusing, and disturbing.

17% of my DNA matches that of people in Southwest Asia. I hope that sharing my work of creating Eve's Imprint will catalyze your own inquiry into how you have descended from Mitochondrial Eve and are connected to cultures across our planet.