Sydney Cain: Dust to Dust by Rena Bransten Gallery

SYDNEY CAIN

dust to dust

SYDNEY CAIN dust to dust

Published on the occassion of the exhibition: Sydney Cain: Dust to Dust Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA December 4, 2021 - February 5, 2022 & in conjunction with:

Sydney Cain: Refutations Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA 2021 Radio Imagination (commissioned mural) included in the exhibition Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism Oakland Museum of California 2021/2022

Untitled (Manifest), 2019 6

Untitled (Trinary Starmap), 2019 7

Refutations (Abiku Guides) & Refutations (It’s time...), 2020 8

SURROUNDED BY COMPANY ANGELA N. CARROLL

Strange worlds whirl in my mind, strange worlds whirl in my mind with a glow like sunset, a thrill of dawn, strange worlds in my dream world, a world, a world, strange worlds a world a world, dream worlds, a world a world, Black myth, a world a world, dream worlds, strange worlds, Black myth, a world, a world, a world, a world a world a world…1 – June Tyson We are all on this journey alone, surrounded by company.2 - Jimetta Rose

There are many worlds, infinite planes of existence that swirl beyond our spaceways. The question of who or what occupies those dimensions, realms that rest at the periphery of our conscious and unconscious states, anchors the work of mixed media artist Sydney Cain. We have been warned about the violence of a single narrative, a dominant origin story, or one supreme truth. Study of womanist writers, Global South cosmologies, African Traditional Religions (ATRs), and pre-colonial mythos affirm that the chasm between our world and others is not as distant or difficult to traverse as we have been told. Cain is intrigued by the possibilities of other worlds that prevail in what she calls “the other side of the waters,” a metaphor for the veils between our lived experiences and our corporeal death. Inspired by the improvisational performativity of free jazz, Dadaist stream of consciousness, and transcendental ecstatic reverie, Cain intuitively renders visions into immersive visualizations. She does not consider herself to be “drawing” the work. Instead, her process and practice employ palpable call and response traditions, communication between spiritual presences and the artist, communication between spiritual presences as iterated by the artist, and viewing audiences. Cain simultaneously activates and troubles our collective ways of seeing by encouraging viewers to be present with the work as witnesses without always fully understanding what they are observing. When we, the viewers, embark on the journey to assess our ways of seeing, we access tools of remembrance, a means through which to recall the power of who we are and who we have always been by witnessing reverent iterations of ancestral presence. Collective and individual liberation begins in the imagination. Envisioning worlds where our presence is monumental, and congregations of ascendant beings enunciate our power, is a revelatory reflection. Cain troubles colonial ways of seeing that have been used to indoctrinate Black Africans, First Nation tribes in America, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Latin Americans through forced religious conversion and cultural shaming. The beliefs forwarded by missionaries installed by European empires posited traditional healing and spiritual systems as primitive and demonic conventions. The residue of that conditioning continues in the present and exacerbates fear rather than receptivity about communicating with spiritual presences. Queries about how to reinvigorate and challenge our ways of seeing are always forefront in Cain’s art practice and process. What began as intimate works on paper depicting intricately rendered sacred geometry as expressed in Cosmograms: Visions of Black Matter exhibited at Betti Ono Gallery (2013), slight interdimensional figures as defined in the Aurites series exhibited in Always Here at Omi Gallery (2015-2016) and abstract landscapes in the Refutations series (2018-2020) evolves in her latest large-scale bodies of works on wood and paper which include Refutations (Abiku Guides) & Refutations (It’s Time…) (p. 8), exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora (2021), and Radio Imagination (pp. 14, 15, 17), an immersive installation at the Oakland Museum of California (2021). In Radio Imagination, a fifteen-panel installation constructed with acrylic, steel, pastel, and chalk on wood, situated with composer Nicole Mitchell’s soundscape, Mothership Calling in the entrance of the exhibition Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism (2021-2022), Cain creates She Who Builds With Her Hands Makes Herself King II, 2020

a narrative arc that follows a sonic wave initiated by an intergalactic DJ through space and time to the realm of the ancestors and mammoth apparitions. Radio Imagination is a quintessential example of Cain’s mixed media and multidisciplinary approach to the chronicling of history, the present, and the future. In her worlds, Black people have always existed, and the residual traces of our presence and imprint in this and other dimensions perseveres beyond modern constructs of time and space. Cain transmutes invisible likeness into manifestations that obscure delineations between figuration and abstraction, lived reality, and what Gloria Anzaldua referenced as “the world of the soul, the world of dreams, the world of daydreams, the world of images.”3 In Cain’s iterations, the peripatetic presences that navigate seen and unseen worlds are not tethered to one specific doctrine or belief system. Instead, she invokes blur as a principal element asserted through her procedural methodology, the cautious, strategic, and intuitive compounding of distinct traditions, mythos, and belief systems, and also activates blur as a palpable aesthetic feature. Cain transcribes interdimensional realities to make those energies more legible and, in doing so, resists histories of colonial erasure that demonize philosophies that predate Abrahamic ideologies.

Refutations (Tricksters in Pools) 2020

The scenes Cain visualizes are meta-representational figurations; entities, ancestors, or protective deities who reside in other worlds and peer out at us as we peek in. The characteristics of each figuration are nuanced; bodies are humanoid and celestial, encompassing histories of African presence in the world and expansive astroblack universes. Entities who emerge from the blackness are often non-gender specific, and this intentional portrayal disrupts stark gender binaries and boundaries. The ambiguity of her figurations is a continuous and fluid feature across all her bodies of work. The astroblack gestural marks and pigments that form each panel’s figurations and landscape are akin to wombs and black holes – symbolic surrogates for the primordial ruptures that mark creation and death. Gates or bodies of water are often situated in the foreground of works in the exhibition Dust to Dust which includes the work Remember to Cross the River (2021) (pp. 26 & 27), an acrylic, iron oxide, and charcoal work on paper, the series Refutations which includes She Who Builds with Her Hands Makes Herself King I (2020) (p. 49) & She Who Builds with Her Hands Makes Herself King II (2020) (p. 10), acrylic, charcoal, metal, and graphite works on wood and Tricksters and Pools (2020) (p. 11), a graphite, charcoal, and pigment work on paper. The recurrent iconography of gates and bodies of water constitutes veils between worlds, the possibilities of human perception, and our collective ways of seeing. Bodies are more than their corporeal representation; they are also landscapes. The ethereal blackness that contours and forms each interdimensional being construct geographies unconstrained by cartographic delineations of space. The beings simultaneously inhabit and overwhelm the spaces they occupy. Each figuration is materially and racially black; graphite, powdered steel, spinel black, and pastels are employed in a repetitive action of layering and prudent redaction to resolve and reveal an unseen figure and world. The incorporation of hyper-black materials actuates an optic palette cleanser—a way to completely immerse viewers in a domain that absorbs rather than reflects light. The lack of reflective elements compels an internal assessment by viewers, an intentional safe space to contemplate presence, memory, and the energies that precede now.

Untitled (from the Aurites series), 2016 12

It is rare to see singular figures in this new series. Instead, Cain’s interdimensional presences always gather in mass. The intentional act of rendering Black forms in sacred convocation enunciates a symbolic defiance against real-world attempts to eradicate and legislatively prohibit Black people’s mass gatherings and also stands as a testament to the inability of genocidal systems to issue an eternal death blow to the communities it terrorizes. These works proclaim the possibility of immortality distinct from the singular articulations proselytized by Abrahamic traditions—a life beyond this life that favorably aligns with pre-colonial cosmologies. Cain’s practice deploys a simultaneously intuitive and research-informed approach activated by regenerative gestural mark-making. This process is inherently alchemical—a nonlinear mapping of spacetime that transmutes presumptions that life ends after death. Her nonlinear approach to time and nonbinary assessment of spirituality employs what Michelle Wright may refer to as epiphenomenal time.4 Cain pays homage to energies who have ascended their human forms by depicting a nonfatalistic afterlife where ascendant likenesses are not restricted to the binary of heaven or hell, and the liminal realms they inhabit are not constrained by the stagnant bounds of purgatory. The lexicons Cain adapts are deeply informed by modern physical science and pre-colonial metaphysics.5 Trinaries, rhizome number sequences that spiral out into intricate geometric patterns in the background or foreground of a scene, frequently recur in works rendered between 2015-2021. Radio Imagination (2021) (pp. 14, 15, 17) and works from the Ark of Bones series (2021) (pp. 35, 37, 39) are the most recent series to include trinaries iconography. The sequences are often iterated as replications of the number two tethered to offshoot branches of other twos. The trinaries nod to binary codes and acknowledge the intersections between spirits, ethereal presences, and epigenetics. The lines that bind the numbers to one another illustrate allegorical, metaphysical, and intergenerational bridges between earth-bound and ascendant beings.

The Drinking Gourd, 2018

Cain mines traditions that reclaim transformation as a birthright and normalize interdimensional travel. Many African Traditional Religions affirm this knowing, remembrance, and ways of seeing as liberatory pathways to past, present, and future wisdom. Black futures are not bound to one plane of existence. Cain’s prolific and compelling work enunciates the realization that our liberation is already assured. We are all on this journey alone, surrounded by colossal ancestors. Travel the spaceways, sit at the feet of Cain’s immense constructions, and hear what these presences have to share with you.

Citations: June Tyson, Sun Ra Arkestra. “If You Are Not A Myth-Strange Worlds In My Mind” [Song]. On June Tyson Saturnian Queen of the Sun Ra Arkestra [Album] (2019) Jimetta Rose. “Surrounded By Company” [Song]. On The Light Bearer [Album] (2016) 3 Anzaldua, Gloria. (2009) Creativity and Switching Modes of Consciousness. A revised version of a transcribed lecture given on May 26, 1986 at Vermont College’s Noble Hall, Montpelier Vermont 4 Wright, Michelle M. (2015) Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. University of Minnesota Press 5 Thompson, R. F. (1983). Flash of the spirit: African and Afro-American art and philosophy. Random House. 1

Radio Imagination (details), 2021 (previous pages and opposite) 16

And They Are Not Afraid of the Night Because They Are the Color of It, 2021 (installation view) 18

Sydney Cain: Dust to Dust at Rena Bransten Gallery, 2021 (installation view) 20

Baba and Nana, 2021 22

Remember to Cross the River (details), 2021 (top left, top right, bottom left) / Baba and Nana (details), 2021 (bottom right + opposite) 24

Remember to Cross the River, 2021 27

Night Guardians, 2021 (left) / Towards the Grounds...(Processions), 2021 (right) (installation view) 28

I Am Everywhere (Sassafras), 2021 30

I Feel Protected Inside the Web, 2021 32

Ark of Bones (Submerged), 2021 (left) / Ark of Bones (Pollen), 2021 (right) 34

Ark of Bones (Shekere), 2021 (left) / Ark of Bones (The Warriors See), 2021 (right) 36

Ark of Bones, pt. 1, 2021 38

Refutations (For Those Waiting for Light), 2019 40

Refutations (Water Who Holds Light), 2019 42

At the Corners I Miss #1, 2020 44

Refutations (After Everything Spills Through the Seams), 2020 46

Refutations (We Saw You Come and Go and Come Back Again), 2020 47

She Who Builds With Her Hands Makes Herself King I, 2020 48

Generations #2 (detail), 2021 50

Generations #2, 2021 51

Where Water Goes After It Leaves Here, 2019 52

Waterways, 2021 54

Waterways (Patient), 2021

Waterways (Becoming), 2021

Waterways (Beloved #1), 2021 55

Ancestral Pools #3, 2020 56

Xrossroads (Cane), 2019 58

Xrossroads (Never Catch Me #2), 2019 59

Xrossroads (Never Catch Me #1), 2019 60

Xrossroads (The Shakers), 2019 62

House of the Rising Sun, 2020 64

Sydney Cain installing at SOMArts, San Francisco, 2017 66

My artistic journey is marked by inquiries into origins. My curiosities surrounding origin stories and metaphysics are part of a shared lineage throughout the African diaspora. Our ancestors have left us with an abundance of knowledge and beautiful secrets gathered from the swamps and the infinite expanse of other galaxies. I am most interested in what seeds have been dispersed and how we continue to blossom even after continuous storms try to bury us. The carbon-based materials and dry pigments I utilize are residuals from the burning, breaking, soaking, burying, and crystallization of bones, sap, and quantum particles. The residuals of marine microbes which have taken millions of years to form are what we call chalk. I’m fascinated by using psychometry to understand the relationship between the specific material I use, and the storytelling that emerges through the process of creating. The practice of shifting and digging – activities of erasure and revelation – allows me to explore, change, and release the need to know what will be revealed through this process. Though my work often evades specificity by drawing elusive figures, it is intentionally specific in its reference to African aesthetics, mythos, and traditions. I choose not to identify (or typify) the figures or symbols that recur in my work because left open, the doors of perception remain infinite, offering people the opportunity to see multiple possibilities reflected in themselves. By way of Cain and Ruffin lineages from New Orleans, I am the second generation to be raised in San Francisco. The conjunction of scattered lineages, dysfunctional religiosity, and time has contorted my connection geographically. Yet it is a crossroad that has drawn me to teleologies, understandings of our afterlives, and genealogy. The beauty revealed through my excavation occurs despite white delusional consciousness that attempts to block many of us from asking questions and instead encourages us to reject parts of ourselves. I am asking about our bottomless origins so that I, we, they, continue to heal by remembering. In the words of Karen Seneferu, “what is buried is not lost.”

Dust to Dust is an excavation into memory and liminal spaces. In communing with these entities, I invite us to explore transcendental grounds of the unseen. -Sydney Cain, 2021

LIST OF WORKS BY PAGE NUMBER

Untitled (Manifest), 2019, graphite on paper, 9 x 6 inches

Untitled (Trinary Starmap #1), 2019, graphite on paper, 9 x 6 inches

Refutations (Abiku Guides) (left panel) & Refutations (It’s time...) (right panel), 2020

graphite, charcoal, metals, acrylic on wood, 48 x 48 inches (each panel)

She Who Builds With Her Hands Makes Herself King II, 2020, acrylic, charcoal, metal, graphite on wood, 48 × 48 inches

Refutations (Tricksters in Pools), 2020, graphite, charcoal, pigment on paper, 33 x 46 inches

Untitled, from the Aurites series, 2016, graphite on paper, 10 x 8 inches

The Drinking Gourd, 2018, graphite on paper, 12 x 9 inches

14-17

Radio Imagination [installation for the exhibition Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism at the Oakland Museum of California], 2021,

acrylic, steel, pastel, chalk on wood, 15 panels, dimensions variable

And They Are Not Afraid of the Night Because They Are the Color of It [installation view], 2021

acrylic, ball point pen, pigment, charcoal, graphite on wood, 96 x 144 inches

22-23

Baba and Nana, 2021, acrylic, iron oxide, charcoal on paper, 72 x 120 inches

26-27

Remember to Cross the River, 2021, acrylic, iron oxide, charcoal on paper, 72 x 120 inches

Night Guardians (left) & Towards the Grounds...(Processions) (right) [installation view], 2021

acrylic, pigment, charcoal, graphite on wood, 48 x 48 inches (each)

I Am Everywhere (Sassafras), 2021, acrylic, pigment, graphite on wood, 21 x 32 inches

I Feel Protected Inside the Web, 2021, acrylic, pigment, graphite on wood, 21 1/2 x 17 inches

Ark of Bones (Submerged), 2021, acrylic, pigment, graphite on wood, 36 x 24 inches (left)

Ark of Bones (Pollen), 2021, acrylic, pigment, graphite on wood, 36 x 24 inches (right)

Ark of Bones (Shekere), 2021, acrylic, pigment on wood, 24 x 18 inches (left)

Ark of Bones (The Warriors See), 2021, acrylic, pigment on wood, 24 x 18 inches (right)

Ark of Bones, pt. 1, 2021, acrylic, pigment, charcoal on wood, 48 x 60 inches

Refutations (For Those Waiting for Light), 2019, graphite, charcoal, pigment on paper, 33 x 46 inches

Refutations (Water Who Holds Light), 2019, graphite, charcoal, pigment on paper, 33 x 46 inches

At the Corners I Miss #1, 2020, graphite, charcoal, pigment on dyed paper, 22 x 42 inches

Refutations (After Everything Spills Through the Seams), 2020, graphite, charcoal, metals, acrylic on wood, 48 x 48 inches

Refutations (We Saw You Come and Go and Come Back Again), 2020, graphite, charcoal, metals, acrylic on wood, 48 x 48 inches

She Who Builds With Her Hands Makes Herself King I, 2020, acrylic, charcoal, metal, graphite on wood, 48 x 48 inches

Generations #2, 2021, pigment, graphite on paper, 30 x 22 inches

Where Water Goes After It Leaves Here, 2019, watercolor on paper, 22 3/4 x 35 inches

Waterways, 2021, watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches (left)

Waterways (Patient), 2021, watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches (right)

Waterways (Becoming), 2021, watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches (left)

Waterways (Beloved #1), 2021, watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches (right)

Ancestral Pools #3, 2020, watercolor on paper, 35 x 22 1/2 inches

Xrossroads (Cane), 2019, monotype and intaglio, 19 x 15 inches

Xrossroads (Never Catch Me #2), 2019, monotype and intaglio, 16 x 20 inches

Xrossroads (Never Catch Me #1), 2019, monotype and intaglio, 16 x 20 inches

Xrossroads (The Shakers), 2019, monotype and intaglio, 16 x 20 inches

House of the Rising Sun (left) with isolated element (right), 2020

relief, intaglio, graphite, digital print, paper on custom rotary file, 9 x 9 x 9 inches

House of the Rising Sun (left) with isolated element (right), 2020

relief, intaglio, graphite, digital print, paper on custom rotary file, 9 x 9 x 9 inches

Published by Rena Bransten Gallery on the occassion of the exhibition Sydney Cain: Dust to Dust December 4, 2021 - February 5, 2022 All artwork © Sydney Cain Essay © 2021 Angela N. Carroll Photo credit John Janca: artwork & installation images on pages 19, 21-27, 29, 35 (rt), 37, 41, 43, 45, 50-51, 53-55, 57-59, 61, 63, 64 (lft), 65 (lft) Sydney Cain: all other artwork Chris Grunder: installation images of Radio Imagination at the Oakland Museum of California on pages 14, 15, & 17 Sasha Kelley: image of Sydney Cain on page 66 *I Am Everywhere (Sassafras) & I Feel Protected Inside the Web are published by generous permission of Emergence Magazine Catalog design by China Langford ISBN: 978-0-578-30566-0

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