Not Shackle, But Shell: A Catalogue Giveaway
On the Pods, Sea-Enshrined, of Wendy Nanan
To be let into an artist’s studio is to stand in the mouth of a great awakening. It’s a journey that exacts double-barrelled trust: the artist is trusting you to be a visitor worthy of their time. You, ignorant of what you will ultimately discover, are trusting yourself to sit with your ignorance until it opens into something approaching a vision.
When I visited Wendy Nanan’s studio for the purpose of writing an essay on her pods, the artist left me to my own devices. Six papier-mâché vessels were mounted on the wall before me. I stood for a while, small notepad in hand, before adopting the pose you see here. To be with the pods, I needed be be beneath them, under the very teeth of their thrall. Teeth was the word that came to me first; you will recognize shells.
Hunched over my notes, I wrote the inchoate beginnings of a poem in Wendy’s studio:
Bodies of shells like canoes like grottoes like shrines
Hidden Madonnas, emergent whores / shells like eyes
Like the tip of a tongue or white foam of wave / what
Lingers in crevice-work, vulval and veiled?
I stayed as long as I could in that sunlight-dappled open-air room, existing with the pods, then I took my notes home and slept on them. Images of maritime tumult, artilleries of briny carapace, swam in my dreams. The poem did not continue, but the essay that unravelled onto the page reached, unsurprisingly, for other poets to help house the language of what I was working through. The title of the final essay, “Not Shackle, But Shell”, follows from a line of Dionne Brand’s in No Language is Neutral. No finer sojourner on the journey towards an(y) understanding than this, than the bare regard of a poem, which will never lie to you even when the truth is as jagged as a broken barnacle underfoot. Better that your hot foot-blood runs towards ocean tide.
What I think I am beginning to understand, slowly through progressive missteps, vaults and chorusing tumbles: to write about art does not need a new tongue, a terraformed rhetoric. I am closest to the art I write about when I let the elegant cannisters of taught approaches sit empty: when I let myself be with the work, and let the work be with me. The double-edged blade of abiding suits me deeply, and so it was with Wendy’s pods, which continue to live in my consciousness.
If this is the first time you’re encountering Wendy Nanan’s work, you could do worse than to start with the pods. They are an empyrean sextet, answerable to no-one yet providing you, their viewer, with responses to questions as old as seabed. Cleave to them, and let them cling to you: your dreams, your feminist incursions, your own art.
A Catalogue Giveaway
“Not Shackle, But Shell” appears in the limited edition catalogue produced to accompany everything slackens in a wreck, curated by Andil Gosine for the Ford Foundation Gallery. The show, which ran June 1 - August 20, 2022, featured the work of Margaret Chen, Andrea Chung, Wendy Nanan, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary. Beautifully designed and printed, the catalogue includes essays on each artist’s contributions, as well as a curatorial reflection by Gosine and full-page photographs of the art itself, inviting careful reading and rapt visual exploration. It is a gem.
I’m giving away ten physical copies of the catalogue to my Substack subscribers, wherever you reside planetarily.
To claim one, simply reply to this post in the comment section, and I’ll be in touch directly. If you live in Trinidad, I’ll arrange to get your catalogue to you via local mail/physical meet-up/duenne transmission. If you live non-locally, your catalogue will be mailed out via regular post, with haunting vibes, by mid-April.
Update on March 28th, 2023: Thank you for your tender, fierce witness, dear ones. All catalogues have now been claimed. 🐚🐚🐚
Thank you, as always, for your rich and wild support, dear rebels. It’s an honour to commess this space with each of you. Til soon, may your dreams be shellful. 🐚
Thank you for your tender, fierce witness, dear ones. All catalogues have now been claimed. 🐚🐚🐚
What a gift to read this on my commute home from work, on the A train as it rumbled underground and after thinking about all of the waterways that have been forced underground in New York City. <3 <3 <3 I would love a catalogue if there are any left!