Michelle Rogers Exploring the theme of immigration, at home and abroad.
“PAINTING,” DECLARED PABLO PICASSO, “IS NOT DONE TO DECORATE APARTMENTS. IT IS AN INSTRUMENT OF WAR."
And there is no better way to
describe the challenging and provocative work of award-winning Irish
artist, Michelle Rogers. It is not diminutive, nor ornamental, and is
certainly not meant to soothe the senses. Influenced by past masters
such as Caravaggio and Goya, she presents us with a world that is
almost overwhelmingly desolate, subsumed and torn by conflict and
repression. Yet, despite their often confrontational subject matter,
her paintings are possessed by a compelling, terrible beauty, and
reflect her compassion as an artist and as a unique observer of the
human experience.
Her latest work, Lampedusa, which addresses the simmering, global issue
of emigration, is a case in point. In the summer of 2003, just days
apart, two hopelessly overloaded Tunisian boats capsized some 50 miles
south of the Italian island of Lampedusa and more than 260 people are
thought to have drowned. Shipwrecks like this, claiming the lives of
countless, often nameless refugees, are becoming increasingly common on
the perilous seas between Africa and the beckoning coasts of Europe.
Such thwarted, tragic voyages symbolize the grim reality of emigration
in today’s world of tightening borders and suspicion towards
asylum-seekers.
A contemporary nod to Gericault’s Raft of the
Medua, Rogers pays a specific, haunting tribute to the courage and
humanity of those who perished at Lampedusa, and, on a broader scale,
recognizes the shared dreams and desires that drive people to abandon
their homeland in search of a new life, and the risks that they are
prepared to take on the way, with often tragic consequences.
“Works of this power and impassioned social outrage are rare,” observes
Nicholas Bergman, curator of the Caelum Gallery in New York, where the
painting exhibited at the end of January this year. “The men are all
seemingly identical: physically and metaphorically, they are in the
same boat, but each is in his own personal hell.”
LAMPEDUSA, Michelle Rogers
Just days
before the Lampedusa tragedy, Rogers recalled an Italian minister
suggesting that the army should use cannons to blow the emigrant ships
out of the water. “It is just wrong, the belief that emigrants are in
some way subhuman, or expendable,” she says. “With this painting, I
wanted to highlight their desperation, their hope for the future, the
remarkable sacrificial journey they felt compelled to make, and at the
same time, I wanted to try and encourage people to reach past their own
prejudices.”
An emigrant of choice herself, she relocated from
Ireland to Italy about five years ago and settled into a stone-walled
15th Century apartment just steps away from Piazza Navona in Rome where
she drew inspiration from its ancient, retrospective beauty. “As an
artist, Rome is both humbling and inspiring – to be surrounded by the
past and by the most magnificent art ever created.” She is equally
drawn to New York, although for different reasons. “I think it was Cy
Twombly who said every day New York reinvents itself. For me, it is a
youthful city, always looking to the future, and where people are more
prepared to take risks, always searching for the next big thing.”
In person, Rogers is earnest yet unassuming, particularly in comparison to the iconoclastic vision of her work. She grew up in Dundalk, a small industrialized town just south of the Irish border, at the height of the troubles. While this may have influenced her tendency to focus on the darkest elements of human nature, she chose not to cast her unforgiving eye on the conflict so close to home, preferring to concentrate on injustices taking place further a-field. In 1993, on a trip which has helped to define her career, she was one of several artists chosen to participate in an Amnesty International mission to Bosnia, where she witnessed the horrific aftermath of the Balkan war. Unable to shake the experience, she spent the next few years painting. The end result was A Dark Heart, her collection of magnificent, though troubling, oil paintings that capture the moral degradation of war, through the simplest, yet most poignant of images - the gratuitous destruction of a library; a rain drenched funeral; the solemn march of homeless, broken refugees. In 2005, the series was featured in an exhibition commemorating the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebenica, at the U.N. Plaza in New York.
Acclaimed film director Terry George is a fan of her work, having purchased a painting she donated to an Irish Arts Center fundraising auction some years ago. This is an appropriate acknowledgement, given the parallel themes running through his most recent film, Hotel Rwanda, which explores an ordinary man’s courageous defiance in the face of horrific genocide and international political indifference.
There is no question that Irish filmmakers, dramatists and musicians have, over the past few years, made a resounding international impact, particularly when it comes to hard-hitting social and political statements about globalization, emigration, repression and inequality. The visual arts, have, in comparison, been relatively silent, something which Rogers hopes is about to change. “Perhaps its because in the past, fine art in Ireland has always been thought of as more inaccessible than literature or music, and that artists have been more inclined to play safe as a result. I know I’ve always felt like an outsider, because my work does not necessarily present conventional images or values, but at the same time, I have always believed that my way of expressing myself has actually been very Irish.”
Whether she chooses to deal with vast subjects such as war and emigration, or the sheer sense of isolation that engulfs those embarking on personal or geographical rites of passage, Rogers pushes the boundaries of our traditional expectations about modern Irish art, in a way that is particularly relevant to modern Ireland as it seeks to assert itself on the world stage beyond the historical turmoil of its own borders.
