Artist-in-Residence Hakeem Adewumi contemplates the identity of mythological monsters often banished from society. Read on to learn more about his artwork, The Making of the Hydra, and the dream of regeneration in the wake of violence for our LGBTQ+ ancestors.
What does it mean for us to expand and become more of ourselves in a riotous world fixed on our destruction?
During my time as an Artist-in-Residence, I was able to spend many hours in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s galleries. Generously displayed throughout the Museum are relics of garish mythological creatures and their fantastical origins: mermen posing delicately around the fountain, gargoyles perched along the corridors, and a mosaic of Medusa’s head centered in the lush Courtyard garden. The many dragons that were painted, carved, chiseled, and gilded throughout centuries are abundant; one can take only a few steps in any gallery to see a monster figure surfacing along the stony corridors.
So many of these creatures are easy to miss, embedded within the structures of the space suggesting how deeply incorporated they were to culture and use of imagination at their time of creation. It got me thinking: how essential is our own mythology in our identity and the places we create? As an early fan of Greek and Roman mythology, I have always appreciated the world building exercise of creating a world where all things coexist. What can that perspective teach us? What values can we uplift in our communities by relying on mythology to deepen human connection?
Some scenes within the mythological artworks feature a gargantuan monster being slain by a hero, typically Hercules (Heracles) or another valiant fighter. Saint George is seen taking down a dragon in a marbled relief above the Fenway Court entrance as well as in a colorful painting by Carlo Crivelli located in the Raphael Room. In Western culture, marauding dragons and mythical creatures are always in search of violence and destruction. Seeing these creatures slain and banished from society along with our growing disdain for the other marks more sinister revelations in our cultural morality. Perhaps what I am suggesting is that our safety is hinged on the death of the other; in order for me to exist in my perceived safety, no monsters can exist. In order for me to claim my identity I must rely on the barbarian, the barbaric state that makes brutal, cruel, warlike, and insensitive people central to our cultural authority.
In 2023, the Gardner Museum invited me to create a work for the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade. Throughout the creation of this public artwork, I was drawn to the writings and teachings of people who were convinced that the way we relate to each other is in desperate need of intervention. James Baldwin has an illuminating quote from his collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, that says:
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.
— James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955
I made Making of the Hydra in response to Mark Seliger’s On Christopher Street exhibition to offer a noteworthy take on art that does not fall on the limits of representational posture. The hydra, a regenerative creature from Greek mythology, has a broader story than we have been conditioned to believe. Merging my body with a head of a hydra became a symbol of possibilities beyond torment and barbarism. To regenerate in the wake of violence is the dream of all of our LGBTQ+ ancestors. I made this work as a cultural reference to being much more, the other, and the opaque as a place of power and sensuous entitlement.