Published:
Caleb Azumah Nelson
Donald Rodney, In the House of My Father, 1997, Photograph123 × 153 cm. Image © The Donald Rodney Estate.
I.
My first encounter with Rodney’s work is a beautiful, timely accident. I’m in one of the reading rooms of the British Library, where I have been shuffling back and forth, endlessly, for weeks. Each morning, I would request a stack of books – photography, poetry collections, art monographs – which felt relevant to my research, and on one particular day, a book I did not request made its way into the stack: a compilation of Black British Artists and their work. I cleaved the book down the middle and there, on the first page I opened was Rodney’s work, titled, In The House of My Father. I immediately recognised the title from my Christian upbringing, the full quote reading, In the house of my Father, there are many rooms. At the time, I am trying to process my own relationship with my father, wrangling with the things he cannot say to me, or doesn’t have the language for, the many rooms in the house to which I do not have the key. I would go on to learn that Rodney was too unwell to attend his father’s Nine Night, that at the time of his father’s passing he was in the midst of a crisis – the term given to a Sickle cell attack. This gap, between his desire to mourn and his inability to do so, would birth Rodney’s final body of work, 9 Night in Eldorado, as well as the piece I found myself transfixed by. There, sat in the quiet of the reading room, I couldn’t get past the fragility of the sculpture, held together by dressmaker pins, cradled in his hand. The strength, not in the structure, but in the vulnerability of exposure, his open palm an invitation into his heart, his family. With this gesture, Rodney suggests, this is who I am, this is who I might be.
II.
How does the self come to be? And how do we make space to be our whole selves? The aforementioned piece was constructed from Rodney’s own skin removed during an operation to treat an abscess or a canker which emerged during a sickle cell anaemia crisis, a condition he would’ve inherited from his father, who would’ve inherited it from his father before that. Their selves, our selves, folding into one another: we contain multitudes. And what else do we inherit? And how do we carry around these inheritances, how do we make space for them in our lives? Solange Knowles, on her album When I Get Home, speaks of the idea of multiplicities, of struggling to contain herself in a singular expression. I think Rodney is the same. There was a refusal on his part to merely be the self as seen – a young Black artist suffering from a chronic and debilitating illness – a refusal to let this define him and his expression. In the way his images spill from the frame, the way each sculpture has a presence of its own which haunts long after it has left your field of vision – or the instance of his memento mori work Psalms, a motorised wheelchair fitted with sensors and a camera; an absence marking a presence, the spirit of Rodney wandering the gallery, as spirits do, as Rodney might’ve, as he still do[es]. Rodney makes it clear the labels affixed to him didn’t serve as limitation, but as grounds for a boundless exploration of the self.
III.
British – indeed, Western – society too often refuses to acknowledge their part in the violence of the colonial project. The excuse is usually that this is ancient history, but Jamaica, Rodney’s country of origin, only received independence from British Colonial rule in 1962. Ghana, my country of origin, only received independence from 1957. Both of these dates are within my relatives lifetime. This is not the past. This is not ancient. This is not justified.
To be Black in Rodney’s lifetime, to be Black in mine, means to live in the wake of colonial violence, which means to live in a continued crisis, in constant trauma, tending to wounds which are hard to heal without acknowledgement, impossible to heal without address. Wounds which considering our ongoing treatment in Western society, only continue to be retread and deepened. This contributes directly into our self making.
We ought to be concerned about our welfare, Rodney said, when speaking about state and police interaction with Black people. He was speaking on Clinton McCurbin, Cynthia Jarred, Chery Groce; in my time, Azelle Rodney, Rashan Charles, Mark Duggan. I, too, have been stopped and searched more times than I can count. We know, entering these interactions, there’s no guarantee we will exit. We think about how there can be, in Rodney’s words, no next time, but know, in our hearts, there will probably be a next time. Time as the flat circle. The collision of the past, present and future. Always in the wake, the continued crisis.
V.
Time has taken on a differently quality since 2020 – a direct consequence of the global pandemic. We have learned the constant awareness of our mortality, the constant anxiety of potential death around us.
This was the norm for Rodney, as is the norm for many Black people. He didn’t have the luxury of trying to return to normal. To be Black, to live in the wake of slavery, of violence and systemic injustice, is to live in close proximity to death; for Rodney, the condition he was born with pushed him close enough to touch and hold it, gave him an awareness of his probable early demise. Time always had a different quality for him. Rodney’s diagnosis anchored him to the present but this only provided fertile ground from which his work bloomed; the past, the unavoidable past, he waded into in order to better dismantle the dysfunction of the systems which were failing him in his present. We only need to look to Autoicon – an AI and neural network created to posthumously continue his work in the eventuality of his death– for his future. Rodney was and is always in time.
Portrait of Donald Rodney processed in the home dark room that Rodney set up to createworks for his exhibition ‘Crisis’ at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 1989. Image © The Estate of Donald Rodney. Photo: Diane Symons
VI.
Aside from In The House of My Father, there is an image of Rodney which I adore and return to: a portrait, made by his partner, Diane, created in the darkroom he set up to make images for his show at Chisenhale gallery, Crisis. The title spoke to a political crisis of the time, an erasure of the left and a rise of the right (a set of circumstances which eerily reflect the present), as well as the as destruction and decimation of the world’s eco-structure. In addition, the episodes of Sickle Cell attacks, the illness which Rodney and many other Black people suffered from, then and now. I think he was also referring to the way that Black people are taken to be the illness of society, the disease within the body politic of Britain. This too, was and is a crisis. But in that specifc black and white image, Rodney’s gaze is direct and sure; his face and eyes are open, inviting us towards him. He presents himself not just as a body, or as the disease he was perceived as in British society, but as a person, a whole. The image is honest, it’s him.
VII.
I’ve been thinking of what role art plays in our lives and its ability to foster honest connections. More than ever before, humanity needs to value honesty and connection. I know Rodney believed in community, evidenced by the Donald Rodney plc, a group of friends who encouraged and helped him to continue on with his work, even when in trauma. I know he believed in making space, both for himself and for others, to express himself. I believe Art gives us a space to be honest, to confront, to dismantle, to reassemble. To imagine. Visiting and revisiting Rodney’s work reminds me that other worlds are possible. It reminds me, that even in the face of continued crisis, it is necessary to dream. It reminds me that, even in the face of death, we must continue to inhabit many rooms, to hold space where we can be honest, where we can be our whole selves. Where we can feel alive.
© Caleb Azumah Nelson, January 2025
