What Is The Role Of Women?

Before going down to St. John's, Newfoundland August 2013 to do the performance, Charmaine and Sean are in the Wings Point Parlour working on the frame for the Wild Beast:

Charmaine's mother is a Newfoundlander from Happy Adventure, a distinctive culture she's only truly begun to appreciate over the recent few years. She's aware that my experience, in relation to Wheatley's parents has influenced her artistic practice and decision to become an artist. Walking in her motherʼs footsteps, she's feels like a student of Newfoundland culture and her relatives and new friends made.

Trucking the wild beast down from Wings Point, Gander Bay North in Sean's '95 Chevy to Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's:

Set up in and Eastern Edge workspace:

“…And I caught sight of a woman sitting upon a scarlet-coloured wild beast that was full of blasphemous names and that had seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls and had in her hand a golden cup that was full of disgusting things and the unclean things of her fornication. And upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth. And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus…” [Revelation 17:3-6 New International Version]

“Let a woman learn in silence with full submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence.” [1 Timothy 2:11-12].

The first half of Wheatley's life was indoctrinated by devoted bible training and the second half marked by getting into art college…exposure to the opposite of god-fearing teachings. Her perceptions of life and notions of any sort of afterlife can seem surreal and non-sensical. Polarities defining the logic by which she lives and works. This performance project portraits the understanding Wheatley grew up with marrying her current beliefs through watercoloured drawings and didactic writing, quoting biblical verses that provoke debate around values both familiar and uncomfortable to her, tangible as printed matter tracts to be shared freely. A zealous investigation informed by her present day to confront religious dogma. Christianity operates as a popularly accepted norm especially within smaller communities in Western Society. The bible is used to argue many differing agendas and contradicting political platforms, for instance: to go, or not go to war. In an attempt to better understand Charmaine's own conflicted perspectives, she seeks to engage, incite passionate opinions from others and win converts! Specifics of the final realization challenge her because of the creative tensions coloring Wheatley's artistic practice that’s undergirded by the cultural context of her youth. Charmaine Wheatley explores this, the lasting effects and dimension of this cultural context, in a way that isn’t just proselytizing but an empathetic portrayal.

Post ribbon dance and pseudio-proselytizing: