The Sand and Stars of Timbuktu

The Sand and Stars of Timbuktu

Maxime Banks

G3 Artspace
Parkdale, Victoria  Australia

Opening: Friday 17^th January 2014, 6-8pm
Exhibition: Saturday 18^th January – Wednesday 12^th February 2014

An artist’s poetic navigation through a narrative of place and identity, language and knowledge inspires this multidisciplinary exhibition by Maxime Banks. Her migration story to Australia creates a heightened anxiety of displacement and otherness which informs her work and in this arts installation of visual art, performance, sound and video.

Maxime explores her history as an African American artist living and working in Parkdale and uses the drama of ancient African astronomers as she aligns her history with their history of migration and fragmentation. Her exhibition is a sensory experience encompassing original poetic text written in French, English and Arabic and the rich language of imagery on paper, canvas and textile stirring up the sands of spirituality
and the dust of memory.

The opening night will premiere the short film Banks has created specifically for the exhibition as well as spoken word performance and sound projection. Maxime’s storytelling through art captures her audience and transports them on her journey.

Buitiful down here below

Buitiful down here below

A boy like that will kill your muothah stick to your kind New York streets alleyways dither dither dither Maria i just met a boy a girl named Maria Maria. A boy like that.

Lotus camel caramel legs sitting on a blue mattress in mentone. Vagina shell pods abreast green grasses hanging like bats bats hanging like bunches of grapes past Mentone Uniting Church Venice Street. 2 souls in beach chairs talk looking afront the beige square monstrosity Villa on Venice the man in a cotton hat i wonder the decor inside the lovely architecture and a voyage to Tuscany et Firenze cette annee. How come bees hum hum hummmmming aloft a jacaranda tree.

I saw a bebe skull sitting in a white gum tree with flailing skins hanging sheets flayed bark paper in the afternoon sun on Naples Street the skull upside down staring speaking our silent language. I know i know she is me and i'm it i'm her there sitting waiting in the tree beneath branches and leaves a vision for birds and possums and creatures with my eyes that wander and...

Stick to your own kind your own kind Maria. Where does a magpie live when i don't see his black n white tail feathers? What type of bird was that i looked singing in that tree? he her with lightish blue feathers breast not at me but teasing another. Syrup and hot buttered biscuits from mama's oven in the kitchen a brown tiled linoleum floor avec squares. Golden yellow couches legs across me and my brother Noah caramel smiles unaged teeth the future in front of us both. I want eggs. Loggerhead turtles dancing in turquoise waters South Pacific island Anuta slurping live electric worms 1 special minutes of the year. Killer sharks homing to savage young albatrosses burdened with the weight of inexperience and myopic wings. Patient sharks feed from tables of ocean pacific and smile gleefully unashamed to prostrate jutting triangle daggers that kiss the clear blue heavens with Darwinian sunshine a nonchalant instinct supine et sublime. Gather me there my ocean friend.

Take me home riding the dorsals of water creatures in the deep the deep deep depths take me home a somewhere else my strong golden thighs grasping pale grey blubber flesh a lasso thru jagged open territory guides me through darkened caves deep deep I'm there i'm there unafraid a faint light reddish seen off yonder there take me there take me there my ocean water creature friend. I've returned Is this home where i once was? Do they remembre moi ici? Do you recognize my face i don't have dorsal fins but I got 10 toes prehistoric and a long graceful neck is the sea turtle my cousin? Am i a crab sans a vertebra or an occipital bone? I love i am loved here beneath the horizon ships glide
above far above.

I'm here down below. I never knew you Abbey Lincoln but i heard your searing i miss you i have left you your soulfulness your struggle for an honesty with a price and sacrifice paid. A long life blessed with a meaning seen no felt et heard adorning a leopard cheetah fedora cool authentic beauty astrut a New York street stands with a poetic fist pavement proud existentially alone though a legacy left of millions through time et art. Heard around miles ears and hearts that need touching ahahhhaaahhhhhahhh help me! down here below i'm coming i'm coming take me lost but not alone these creatures these creatures down below sont mes amies The ocean now my home here below ballast moi give me strength i'm here below the inkness surrounds me i swallow long hard and i breathe i like it i likit it is my nectar my jus d'orange drank sur paris streets a pres de L'arc de Triomphe. Where does Haytham a Jordanian lion sit now? I remember his touch thick black hair eyes of owl round protuberances that loved me as a funny clown wearing a red nose earning the crowds coins dans les Champs l'Elysees et chaque annee sur la plage de Rimini en Italie at night in front of cafes with chairs sitting on la rue La Defense in the Baron Haussmann distance a citadel rectangle Place de la Concorde Balzac grande et noir granite cloaked in history et words in novels during times of blood et slaughter. I remembre 12 Bis Ave rue Mac Mahon avec 125 escaliers j'ai marche Rue de Kleber apres class @ Parsons Paris making fashion et learning life sometimes afraid mais toujours aware that this is now and it's passing et i'm i'm it now. I remembre and je think i think Je pense Awakening
j'ai awakening. I'm in the deep sea creatures swimming surround me I'm safe here
it is warm it is wet.

Will mama visit me here? I'm waiting to hold her to embrace my past and remembre et talk talk about baked sweet potatoes hot out of the oven cold butter mingling avec orange flesh and ate with her Southern mouth et eyes resigned to what is. Did she have any regret or remorse any unsaid feelings as the heat of the sweet potatoe with blackened skin suckled her nose and touched the tip of mama's tongue? Did she wonder her children's scars and their fears their nightmares and the dark closed closets? Does she savour synaptic spaces of betrayal a love concrete yet mute? Does mama know that her loving me continues to erupt and sprew spilling from volcanoes that scorch my brain creating spirit craters that transfigure? Do the dead suffer?

I am floating now floating between today and the day i too become bone. I go down into the deep. My home i live below below down there below. The ocean creatures these beasts of the sea below are my family sustain me above aloft searching for. I am alone and love down here below. Sea turtles are my friends. We dance we laugh. We swallow life and breathe. We tell each other our story. Water waits. I am swimming among memory down here below. Sea beasts are my brothers and sisters. I feel this visceral wetness caressing naked raw buitiful am I. The sea the sea deep has become grey and white.
We carry each other home.

--maxime
le 3, 4 janvier 2011

Cups Saucers and Jars

Cups Saucers and Jars

Life is life is life. A challenging beautiful joyous oftentimes cruel brutal mystical thing, overflowing with a melange of emotions simple and complex that exists as is. Cups of hope and sometimes saucers of despair. And faith found in jars with tops on shelves that need to be reached on high ladders taken down unscrewed and opened and held looked inside.

--20 dec 2010 le matin/morning

Cut your heart out

Tell me that you love me or I will cut your heart out. A wild melancholic gratitude undressing lostness. Her hands parting above purple waters. A red star rising. I am the majesty of a day ascending. -- 15 April 2011 23 September 2010

walk with me a while

Study the glory of the sky.
The doors of life open wide.
If the sunshine hurts your eyes,
close quietly and breath.
Come take my hand and walk with me.
Walk with me a while.
Let me.

--31 October 2010

Cipher

Emptiness begins to speak its own past. To see the colour red as it really is. Life a hinterland of reflection and symbols. A cipher unshaped. Not some thing new, but a thing known. A revenant in different form. Things endure while the living lapse. Beauty is here. A thing wondrous, really. --18, 19 june 2010

Alaga Syrup

Hasty compassion rooted in a mind elsewhere. Fried chicken, rice and gravy untouchable tempting the table. Fresh milk of cow on Wisconsin farms drank warm from neglectful hands.
Scars rant. Glimmering branch sprouting void. Plumppest sweet worms grummy mites scurry the unlighted crumbling world beneath sights of wishing grasping helpless moments.
Sounds of love's glance away. Inhaling the power of words to transform heal. Tasting Alaga syrup wseeping Wonder Bread.

--24,31 May 1,2 June 2010