‘the writing is on the wall’

The expression ‘the writing is on the wall’ reminds us of imminent danger or soon to be realised unfortunate inevitable consequences.

Coming from the Aramaic ‘mene mene tekel upharsin’, it is found in the Old Testament Book of Daniel 5:5-31 and refers to an event during Belshazzar’s feast. In the story, Babylonian ‘king’ Belshazzar desecrates holy vessels looted from the destruction of the First Temple by using them to eat and drink from during a feast. His dishonouring of God, results in obscure handwriting appearing on the wall which the king can’t understand, needing the exiled Daniel to interpret. Daniel explains: ‘Mene: God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel: You have been weighed … and found wanting; and Peres (from upharsin): your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians’. Due to his sinning behaviour, Belshazzar could not see the warning that was apparent to others – that he would soon be killed and his kingdom defeated.

I was thinking of this phrase while looking at two text-based wall works in the Triennial Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria – ‘pimiciwan pimatisowi’ (2020) by Joi T. Arcand and ‘Last Words of John Brown’ (2018) by Nari Ward. While clearly the writing is literally ‘on the wall’, it was the ominous meaning of the works which interested me.

Arcand’s  blue neon installation is immediately arresting. Glowing like an advertising sign, with odd geometric shapes, it seems to be insistently trying to tell us something that we can’t understand. Is it a code, or a mathematical equation, or a communication from another race or time?

Arcand is a visual artist who explores her Cree heritage and relationship with her language in her work. Growing up in Saskatchewan (on Muskeg Lake Cree Nation), she was surrounded by family members speaking the Plains Cree language. Her neon work in the NGV uses the Cree syllabic script to remind us of the fragility of culture.

The Cree are one of the largest First Nations groups in North America with more than 350,000 people claiming Cree ancestry in Canada – principally in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The name ‘Cree’ is derived from the Algonkian language and encompasses a number of tribes who speak different dialects. The Cree language is the name for a group of closely related Algonquian languages (a subfamily of American indigenous languages) and is the most widely spoken indigenous language in Canada.

Cree syllabics are versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects. These were developed by James Evans, a missionary in Manitoba in the 1830s-40s, and are based on Pitman shorthand and Devanagari (a left-to-right pseudoalphabet from the ancient Brāhmī script used in the Indian subcontinent). This resulted in nine glyph shapes, each of which stood for a syllable with the vowels determined by the shapes’ orientation. The publication of a syllabics hymn book in 1841 led to the script spreading quickly and widely. As a script, it is easy to learn and visually distinctive from other written languages. (Evans taught by writing on birchbark with soot and became known as ‘the man who made birchbark talk’).

Arcand is interested in what the world would look like if everyday signage was written in Cree instead of English or French. In 2009 her photo series ‘Here on Future Earth’ and in 2017 her neon signage phrases ‘Wayfinding’ were shown across Canada giving ‘visual voice’ to her language. While she prefers her viewers to ‘work to understand the text’ – which fosters a dialogue about the revitalisation of endangered languages – for the Australian audience, Arcand tells us that ‘pimiciwan pimatisowi’ translates as ‘the flow of life’.

‘the flow of life’ is an important reminder that language lubricates social interaction – it is embedded in time and place and embodied in communities. Language constructs meaning and permits the transmission of lore, law and customs to maintain and vitalise a culture and civilisation. But language is also vulnerable to erasure through colonisation. Arcand’s use of ‘Cree’ reminds us of the fragility of the over 200 First Nations languages in Australia and encourages us to reflect on what would happen if our language ceased to be and we were silenced.

Encountering Nari Ward’s installation is confusing. Predominantly red cords droop down the white gallery wall giving the unnerving impression that the wall is pierced and bleeding. It soon becomes apparent that these ‘cords’ are shoelaces from sneakers and that their arrangement spells the words: “This is a beautiful country”.

Ward is known as an ‘accumulation artist’ due to his use of found objects from his neighbourhood to address issues related to consumer culture, poverty and race. Over more than twenty years, his art practice has included scavenged dilapidated baby strollers , shopping carts, discarded television sets and used fire hoses. For his wall installation in the Triennial, Ward uses red and black sports shoelaces to form the words. The use of humble everyday materials is part of his process of making art accessible to viewers.

Shoelaces are universal and often overlooked in our daily lives. For Ward, they are an interesting ‘craft’ material and also a ‘line’ with which he can ‘write’. As sneakers cover territory, they accompany our daily journeys – sometimes being left to ‘mark spaces’ as a street memorial when they are thrown into trees or onto overhead wires to mark territory by marginal groups. Not surprisingly, they are a favourite medium for the artist to explore themes of inclusion and exclusion.

‘This is a beautiful country’ were the last words spoken by John Brown prior to his  public hanging for treason in 1859. Brown was an abolitionist who believed that violence was necessary to end the slavery of African Americans as years of speeches, sermons, petitions, and moral persuasion had failed. In October 1859, he led a raid on the federal armoury at Harpers Ferry in Virginia with the intention of starting a slave liberation movement. In the ensuing melee, few slaves participated in the revolt and seven people were killed (including two of Brown’s sons). Found guilty of murder, inciting an insurrection and treason, Brown was the first person executed for treason in the United States.

Historians debate Brown’s actions, motivations, morality, personality and relation to abolitionism. He is considered by some to be a zealot terrorist and by others a martyr. Born in Jamaica (which had a long history of slavery) and resident in Harlem, Nari Ward, considers Brown a vital and ‘hardcore’ heroic figure in America’s racist struggles. For Ward, Brown’s legacy continues in the Black Lives Matter movement with the artist believing that an essential ingredient for change is the participation of privileged white people – “because that is right and just”. The shoelaces in Ward’s installation are contributed by people of all colours and classes which reinforces the collective effort needed for societal change. Without punctuation, Ward’s appropriation of Brown’s last words might be a statement or a question. It is most definitely a call to action.

Both NGV Triennial text wall works connect in my mind with the story of Belshazzar. If we exploit or dishonour our connections and concerns for others’ histories and lives  – whether this is through racism or erasure – then we should expect ‘the writing to be on the wall’.