14.06.2024

https://www.horniman.ac.uk/event/adolescent-wonderland

Honestly, going to Adolescent Wonderland in the Horniman museum was one of the most wonderful experiences that I have ever had in museums and art galleries. Everything that I find in museums was there: inspiration, community, culture, knowledge, stimulation, enjoyment. A new world to discover.

My love of the museum came to me late in life. We did not go as children. Our culture was Hindi movies and songs and family visits. And the other preoccupation which took up all the time was reading. It was only when I was a mature student that I would go into the free museums around London and be surrounded by learning, culture and knowledge that I grew to love them. Other cultures. Other worlds apart from my own. Travel back into time and prehistory. The concrete things of the cultures and worlds that I had read about in books: the picture and reality to the stories.

What we got with the visit to Adolescent Wonderland was the artist herself, Naomi, accompanied by her husband. And they gave us a personal tour of the artworks. It was an enthralling expedition into the life of her community.

In the photographs, Naomi had worked with the young people of the First Nations to present them as the future and to tell their own stories. She wanted to do something different from the anthropological studies of the people through a white lens where they were presented as being part of prehistory rather than the present and the future. This was photography that was documenting the reality of the community and its young people rather than a series of stereotypes.

Someone with a camera. An artist. That was trying to change the world. For her community. To give them recognition. To allow them to express themselves. To give them a voice and an identity. Someone that was trying to change the world for the community.

Here are some of my favourite photographs from the collection with some personal comments:

‘The Good Sister’

Two kids, sitting on a bicycle. The older girl is snapping herself and her sibling with a smartphone. Behind her, her little sister stands on the bike in a rabbit mask with a cape. She is holding her fingers in the ‘V’ sign for victory.

This image is definitely cute and charming. But it is also more than that. Because this moment from the life, this casual happening in the day, becomes elevated into the mission of the photography exhibit. It is the good sister that is Naomi photographing herself and the younger generation so that they have recognition in this world. So they form part of modernity.

It is not the surroundings that are important. They are in black and white – because they show the emergence of the people from the past. And just like all the kids nowadays, these kids have their bicycles, their fancy dress and their smartphones. They are part of the digital community wherever they are. They are a part of modernity – no different from anyone else.

The sense of connection that is in this photograph is what is its biggest appeal. That sisterly love. That work on the project of photography to represent the self – not the isolated self of the Western world. The sense of self that is the community sense of self. For us and by us.

And, then there is the ‘V’ sign for Victory – this is a fight for representation. The dream of triumph for the community.

‘Daley’s Bike’

This photograph of Kayla posing next to a bike she borrowed is a stunning photograph from her furry pink coat to the beauty of design in the bicycle, to the gorgeous striped trousers that Kayla is wearing. She stands nonchalantly, looking away.

What I liked about this photograph was that it is real diversity and inclusion. The Western fashion world and the Western Media pretend that they are diverse and inclusive. They are not. This is someone that is real posing confidently like a fashion model. And she is real. She is not photoshopped. She hasn’t had someone telling her what to wear or do. She is real. And that is what is beautiful about this photograph. It is her vision of who she is through her clothes. It is her taste. It is her pose. It is how she wants to look. She is not copying anyone. It is a photograph of authenticity and diversity. The beauty of diversity. A taste of what that could look like without the endless, tireless peddling of the same within Western ‘culture’ and ‘taste’.

The colours in the striped trousers match the colours of the wheels of the bike: the body is movement, revolution.

‘OMG’

A young woman is struggling under the weight of a massive pink flamingo float which she is taking to Coen river barefoot. Her eyes are closed. The head of the flamingo is facing her and is above her head. She is draped in a towel.

The body of the woman and the massive pink float make a new body. It is almost a merging of the human with not only the animal in the bird representation, but also plastic, the wonder substance of modernity. Perhaps it is a merging of the human body with the system of the sign, the stuff of representation. And representation is heavy.

The woman is struggling under the heaviness of representation and the modern symbolic system, but she still carries on barefoot. It is a striking image of resilience, the strength of the people and its young. Their adaptability and appropriation of the world outside and their use of it in their own communities even given the iniquities of history and what that symbolic system did to them and the people.

‘Mr Cat Lover’

A man stands in a window frame with a cat. He is at the open window to the right. On his left is a closed window with a reflection of the outside world.

Naomi explained what she wanted to do with this photograph. She wanted to show that these are ordinary people like everywhere else in the world. People with affections and love for the animals. Nice people. People with humanity and emotions.

But I believe there is something else here. With the closed, reflected window to the left, we get an implicit comparison with what is happening with the cat in the open window. The closed window mirrors a humanless world with an empty car outside. The external world. It is inside the open window that there is life and the love of life, humans and humanity.

The essence of the image is when the figure with the cat comes out of the open window into the humanless world to make connections with the viewer in that world. The viewer that he has never had intercourse with. The unknown world of other people. Because, in a sense, they who are unknown are not there. Because to be human is to communicate somehow, anyhow. To communicate love above all. And so, he comes into the window and he moves towards us that do not know him to form a knowledge of knowing between us. A beautiful photograph of a beautiful thought.