Hew Locke’s Wine Dark Sea – A VQR TrueStory Essay – By Gaiutra Bahadur
April 18 2016 – VQR: A National Journal of Literature & Discussion
Boats in Manhattan’s Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art gallery.
Nave (as in a church) has as its root the Medieval Latin word for ship, “navis.” The etymology cues a tradition dating back to at least the fifteenth century: Survivors of shipwrecks and captains prosperous at sea would donate miniature models of boats to churches. Hung from the eaves of European—particularly Scandinavian—cathedrals, these votive boats were a form of thanks but also prayer. They’ve inspired art before, Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio’s “The Apparition of the Ten Thousand Martyrs,” for one. British artist Hew Locke didn’t know of the boats until encountering them in a Portuguese fisherman’s chapel in 2009. Ships had long been in his visual vocabulary, but in that sacred setting he saw them anew: In constellation, in the context of journeys so difficult they require either pleas or gratitude to the gods.
That lens illuminates his work, most recently with the flotilla of thirty-five boats that hang from the ceiling at Manhattan’s Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art gallery. Cruise ships, gold-filigreed galleons, a Coast Guard boat, a dugout canoe, and sailboats all careen together in suspended motion, in an installation consecrated to refugees from Syria and Iraq. Locke christened it “The Wine Dark Sea” in homage to Homer’s “Odyssey” but also to Derek Walcott’s epic poem “Omeros,” which recasts the ancient Greek tale in the Antilles. The title “bends together two seas,” Locke tells me—the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, both scenes of precarious migrant crossings. [Read more]
Comments
This is the kind of essay that I read, again and again; and each time I learn something new – rather like examining a finely cut diamond and discovering a new facet each time.
Ms. Bahadur: ‘Nave (as in a church) has as its root the Medieval Latin word for ship, “navis.”’
This is the pervasive Eurocentric view which she relies on. To her credit, she has done very detailed research in her book, Coolie Woman, documenting the revealing ‘odyssey’ of Indian indentured women to Br. Guiana (I am still only a third through the book), but she has slipped up here (trusting Eurocentrism).
In Sanskrit, NAVIKA means: navigator, helmsman, pilot, belonging to a ship, boatman, sailor, …etc. Because Sanskrit is much older than Latin, it is very likely that Latin derived ‘Nave’ from Navika, is is the case with numerous words. I also recall that ‘GATH’ (in Hindi) refers to a landing or wood/planks placed by a river/stream for washing clothes, dishes, bathing and such. Hence one can see how NAVIKA + GATH can give ‘Navigation’.
Secondly, she writes: ‘The Sun Chapman was memorialized there (museum at Linden – Burnham’s first name) but the exodus of Indians (due to ethnic cleansing at Wismar) was not’. In fact, in a perverse way, it is! The May 26 Guyana Independence (and annual commemoration) is exactly why the date was chosen by Burnham and the PNC – to remind Indo-Guyanese who is the superior ethnic community. Evidence of this was recently provided and hotly debated on another thread a la Elizabeth Jaikaran’s label of Indo Guyanese/Indo- Caribbean. Her detractors claimed she chose the “Indo” label rather than just ‘Guyanese’ because she didn’t want to be designated “Black” – thus identifying Guyanese as “Black”.
Veda Nath Mohabir