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Phoenix thursday, april 16, 19
eighteen
[[image]]
Malcolm: monuments in bronze & braid
by Jean Bergantini Grillo

Hayden Gallery became a tribal 
ent last week, dark and cool, with huge areas of wall and ceiling wrapped in blackness, and, here and there, crinkled and molded bronze sheets gleaming in the occasional shafts of light. Several bronze pieces rested, incongruously at first, on skirts of braided and twisted wool and silk. In the half-lit, sparse surroundings, the works, rather than being dwarfed in such caverhous spaces, grew in appearance, becoming the totems and masks of ancient African dynasties.
The show, Monuments to Malcolm X, is the work of Barbara Chase Bibaud, black and cool herself, with silken braids around her head, looking just as regal, just as much an African art object as the sculpture she created.
We sat around a honeywood table, smiling across the darkness. Barbara is soft and thin, hardly capable (it seemed) of casting or even lifting bronze and aluminum sculpture nearly six feet high; hardly, except for her hands which seemed awkwardly large, like leather mitts. She waves them as she talks, or fingers a heavy bronze free-form pendant which falls from her neck. She doesn't hide her hands, the first indication she wouldn't duck a straight-forward question either.
Here's a girl who has lived in Paris for the past nine years — far, far away from the riot fires and assassinations of blackmen. Why Malcolm? What did he mean to her?
"I wanted to create sculptre [[sculpture]] to embody the idea of Malcolm rather then make monments [[monuments]] to a dead man," she replied.
But since she was ensconed [[ensconced]] in Paris at the time of his death, what brought her to search his ideas? "I read his book," she began, "saw films of his speeches taken by friends. I was so impressed, so turned around, you just can't walk away from that without being changed. I started working on these sculptures immediately and for the next two years."
She adds that the works are not political reactions as much as they are attempts at reflecting a black heritage beyond America, beyond Europe: a new awareness of origin, kindled by Malcolm. "I went to a Pan-African Festival in Algiers in '69 sponsored by the independent African countries. There was dance, film, art exhibits, lectures. The entire thrust was anti-colonialist, and most of the European countries were excluded. It was very much an African thing. I was really excited by it and I can see the results of that festival in my work here. When I first came to Paris, my sculpture was classic in the French way. After getting involved with Malcolm and the Algerian thing, I began to look for some way to incorporate the African heritage in my work without resorting to raffia or feathers. Since I've always had trouble with the bases on which my sculpt rested, I created the skirt on tresses." The result is plaited and knotted wool and silk with a hemp-like effect similar to the paraphernalia of headdresses and masks.
David Kibbey of MIT, wh[o] had brought Barbara and myself together, added "she combine[d] the classic use of patinae[d] bronze with the strange addition of fabric...like fusing two different eras [in] history...[the] work is not medium-oriented.
The bronze and [wood] combination, rather than fighting each other, work together while appearing to defy gravity, like a bronze head standing on its hair. By braiding and knotting the wool and silk, Barbara gives the skirt strength enough to carry the weight of the bronzes.
Although the Malcolm monuments are the mainstay of the show, one or two works are large aluminum pieces that are the basis for a new type of wall — sculptured squares that can be stacked like bricks. "I wanted to do big architectural sculpture," Barbara explained, "But the cost of materials (i.e. bronze) was prohibitive. I found that aluminum alloy at a French foundry. It has a high copper content so it couldn't be welded — the only aluminum alloy which can't, so I created modules which I molded similarly and then connected by screws. I buy the metal by the pound in a plant in Chatillon outside of Paris. I envision huge walls of it on buildings!" The stacked modules on display, isolated as they were, looked more like shiny silver totems. An extension of Algiers.
Barbara stood up to leave; she seemed taller, less soft, more a totem herself. She would be returning to Paris soon, she told me. To work in her foundry. To travel again to Africa. To speak with Eldridge Cleaver again, and I thought of the closing lines from a page of Arthur Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer she had included in the show's catalogue:
"...the smartest thing would be to leave this continent where madness stalks to provide hostages for these wretches. I enter the true kingdom of the children of Ham"

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