Artist Statement

I am Cheryl McIntosh, artist, Jamaican-born and raised and now a member of the diaspora  living in Bonn, Germany. Having lived some 15 years in Africa (Ghana, Benin, Tunisia, Ivory Coast), I was forced to restart an inner exploration, a search for understanding and ultimately reconciling the physical, emotional and psychological journey of peoples of African descent and the consequences of the said journey…from the transatlantic Slave Trade and enslavement, to black on black killings, white on black killings and injustices, institutionalised racism, skin bleaching, hair weaving, self-hate….This voyage has found a channel of expression through art.

As an artist, the transatlantic Slave Trade, The Middle Passage, my unknown forefathers, Apartheid, extrajudicial practice of lynching in the US ( primarily targeted at African-Americans), Despondency and Desolation are some of the themes I have attempted to capture in my art. The historical presentation of black people in fine art paintings and other printed media, have often been limited to servile, comic or demonic images and my personal immersion  attempts to give another face or identity to enforced the servility, the non-comic, non-demonic, lost brutalised human beings….from my faceless black forefathers who were uprooted from their home to the present black diaspora. The merciless exploitation for economic benefits has left its mark on  the psyche and image of both black  and non-black.

My works have been inspired by original historical photographs, and a number of persons including Richard Wright, author of 12 Million Black Voices, Amiri Baraka, SOS, Poems 1961-2013, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Emmett Till, icon civil rights movement  in the US and Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey to name a few. And a visit to Roben Island.

With my work, I aspire to give rise to reflection, awareness, and discourse.