Editor's note:
Indianapolis is a city of many languages — Spanish, Yiddish and German being the top non-English languages most spoken by Hoosiers. Because about 35,000 Burmese and almost 5,000 Congolese French speakers live here, this interview with the curators of the “Mirrors of Common Destiny” exhibit at the Indy Art Center explores some of the many languages we speak in Indianapolis. Translator Ally Ntumba translated from French to English, and artist Saw Kennedy translated his own responses from Burmese to English.
“Mirrors of Common Destiny,” which includes works by over 30 Congolese, Burmese and Thai artists — some of whom wished to remain anonymous because of the topics discussed in their work — is on display at the Indy Art Center in Broad Ripple through March 10.
The exhibit was curated by Jean Claude Lofenia, who is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Saw Kennedy, from Myanmar (officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, also known as Burma) as part of a partnership between Indy Art Center and Patchwork Indy, a nonprofit that works to improve the lives of refugees. Both curators arrived in Indianapolis as refugees.
Though the countries are on two different continents, they share histories: Both were colonized, which later left a power vacuum that was filled by dictators, and both countries have also suffered from ethnic conflict and civil war.
The exhibition depicts life, culture and conflict from the perspectives of the artists. You can attend an artist talk with Lefonia at 5 p.m. March 2.
1. Before this exhibition, what was your experience as an artist living in Indianapolis?
Jean Claude Lofenia:
Prior to this exhibition, my experience in Indianapolis was learning about American culture and the way of life, as well as the role I would play as a painter.
Avant cette exposition, mon expérience à Indianapolis était de comprendre cette mode des vie et la culture des américains, et quelle sera mon apport entant que artiste peintre dans cet pays USA.
Saw Kennedy:
Before the exhibition, I thought that as an artist in Indianapolis, people were not very interested in my creations. I wondered if they would have an understanding of what we are trying to say through our art. After meeting Claire Holba and Bruce Garrison from Patchwork Indy, I learned how important the message of the art was. I became more confident about curating an art exhibition here in Indianapolis.
ပြပွဲမတိုင်ခင်ကIndianapolisမှာအနုပညာရှင်တယောက်အနေနဲ့ကိုယ်ရဲ့အနုပညာဖန်းတီးမှုကိုလူတွေသိပ်စိတ်မဝင်းစားဘူးလို့ထင်ခဲ့တယ်, Claire နဲ့ Bruce( Patchwork Indy) တို့နဲ့ဆုံလာပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း ကိုယ့်အနုပညာကဘယ်လိုစိတ်ဝင်စားစရာကောင်းလဲဆိုတာသူတို့ဆီကပြန်သိရတယ်, ဒီပြပွဲမှာပြသတဲ့ပန်းချီကားတွေက ကိုယ်နိုင်ငံ, ကိုယ့်သမိုင်းနဲ့ ကိုယ့်ရိုးရာယဉ်မူအကြောင်းတွေအပြင် အခုလက်ရှိဖြစ်ပျက်နေတဲ့ပုံတွေကိုလဲပြခဲ့သည်.
2. In choosing the works, how did you ensure that the political messages you wanted to communicate came through?
Jean Claude Lofenia:
I wanted to present the cultural values of the American people and make them aware of the beauty, culture and spirituality of Africa and the Congo in particular, which is threatened by the conflict in Goma and the bad government of the country.
En choisissant ses œuvres dans l’exposition j’avais voulu présenter des valeurs culturelles de faire comprendre au public américain la beauté ‚la culture et la spiritualité de l’Afrique et du Congo en particulier mais ses valeurs sont vraiment menancee par la guerre du Goma et la mauvaise politique du pays La RDC
Saw Kennedy:
There is terrible news from Burma every day, where there are many human rights violations. The news reports became the subjects of my paintings, so that the message could be seen in a new way. My art is about politics, but it is not propaganda. It’s simply the situations that people are facing. It’s about real life.
ပြီးတော့ အခုလက်ရှိကိုယ့်နိုင်ငံထဲမှာလူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုတွေနေရာအနှံမှာနေ့စဉ်ဖြစ်ပျက်နေတဲ့အကြောင်းတရားတွေကအသိထဲအတွေးထဲမှာတချိန်လုံးလွမ်းမိုးနေတယ်, မစဉ်းစားလဲသူ့ဘာသာသူပေါ်လာတယ်, သတင်းထဲမှာလဲနေ့တိုင်းတွေ့မြင်နေရတယ်, ပြည်သူတွေခံစားနေရဒါကကျနော့်ခံစားမူဖြစ်ရတယ်. ဘယ်လိုကူရမလဲမတွေးတတ်တော့တဲ့အချိန်အဖိနိုပ်ခံပုံရိပ်တွေကပန်းချီကားဖြစ်လာခဲ့တယ်…
3. What have been your favorite moments from working on “Mirrors of Common Destiny”?
Jean Claude Lofenia:
My favorite moment is when the two minds of the artists (Lofoenia and Kennedy) came together to bring our values to the USA, to show the American people that immigrants love their country. We ask them for support for our countries — for peace because our countries are at war and in conflict.
Les moment préféré en travaillant sur le miroir du destin commun « c’est quand les deux esprits des artistes se croisent ensemble pour sortir une idée d’apporter des valeurs aux USA . montrer au public américains que les immigrants aiment votre pays et demande le soutient pour la paix de leurs pays respectifs qui sont en guerre.
Saw Kennedy:
I thought that I would have a chance to show my artwork and spread the message about my country. In this, I found great satisfaction.
လာကြည့်တဲ့ပရိတ်သတ်တွေကိုရင်ထဲမှာအမှတ်တရကျန်စေချင်တဲ့အရာက
၁, အခြားတဖက်မှာဘာတွေရှိသလဲ, ဘာတွေဖြစ်နေသလဲ,
၂, လူသားတွေဟာလူသားစံဖို့,
၃, စစ်ဆိုတာပြဿနာဖြေရှင်းတဲ့အခါမသုံးသင့်တဲ့နည်းလမ်းတခုပါ.
4. What would you like visitors to keep in mind when looking at the works?
Jean Claude Lofenia:
Visitors should keep in mind that immigrants did not come here to overtake your jobs or stifle your way of life, but to present our cultural values and get to work for the development of the U.S. We love this beautiful country and ask you to come to the rescue of our brothers and sisters who are dying of hunger and bombing in the wars.
Les visiteurs doivent garder dans leurs esprits que les immigrants ne sont pas ici aux USA pour déranger votre survis, ou étouffer votre mode de vie les USA mais pour présenter leurs valeurs culturelles et se mettre aux travail pour le développement des USA car nous aimons tous ses beaux pays et vous supplier de venir au secours pour sauver nos frères et sœurs qui meurt des faim et des bombardement des guerre.
Saw Kennedy:
This is what I want the visitors to remember: What is there on the other side, what is happening in Burma in their daily lives that we so easily forget? Human beings should act more like human beings and treat each other with respect. And, war is a method that should not be used when solving problems.
ပန်းချီပြပွဲအတွက်ရည်စူးပြီးပြင်ဆင်တွေကိုလုပ်တဲ့အခါလအကြိုက်နှစ်သက်ဆုံးအချိန်ကာလတခုက ကိုယ့်ပြသမဲ့ကိုယ့်အနုပညာရဲ့အဓိပ္ပာယ်တွေကိုပြန်တွေးရင်းကြည်နူးရတယ်, ကိုယ်ပြောပြချင်အကြောင်းအရာတွေကိုပြောပြခွင့်ရတော့မယ်လို့သိရတဲ့အတွက်လဲကျေနပ်ရတယ်, လောကမှာလူသားစံတဲ့လူသားတွေအများကြီးရှိပါတယ်, မမျှတမှုကိုတွန်းလှန်ချင်ကြသူတွေအတူတူစုဆုံဖြစ်တဲ့အခါ လောကမှာမမျှတမှုတွေကတချိန်မှာပျောက်ကွယ်သွားမှာပါလို့တွေးမိပြီကျေနပ်ရပါတယ်
Visit: Indy Art Center is open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.
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