In the Presence of Blues Part II

How do we mourn those we have never met? How do we honour those who have sacrificed for causes greater than themselves? How do we envision futures built on solidarity and community? In the hands of Quinsy Gario, a member of the artist collective Family Connection, these questions become the foundation of a performance. The work centres around the treatment of the memory of St. Maurice, a Sudanese Catholic saint canonised six centuries after his death. Little is known about his life before he sacrificed himself to save a village in the Swiss Alps in the 3rd century. With no surviving drawings of Maurice in the 1800 years since his death, all representations of him have been based on the cultural archive of the societies portraying him. Images of Maurice in the House of the Blackheads, for instance, represent white artists’ ideas of Black men. This raises a critical question: what purpose do these depictions serve, especially if they stem from the time of African colonisation and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?

In previous collaborations with artist Mina Ouaouirst, Gario speculated on the route the Theban general may have taken to the Alps and who he might have encountered along the way. In this new work he reflects on the loss of Maurice and the insights that died with him. Through performance Gario seeks to reposition Maurice within a pan-African Black community and examines how his legacy has been used both by the Catholic Church and others since his death.