ARTistic and ARTisanal

In mining regions in the Amazon, artistic work portraying the lives and strife’s of gold miners is prolific. Artistic expression is part of mining lives and communities; it can be seen in statues and graffiti in the streets. The art demonstrates a sense of pride in how the region has transformed due to the efforts of miners; it also stamps a claim on the territory and occupation. The symbolic value of gold reveals itself in embodied ways: many miners wear gold jewelry, and may adorn their bodies with tattoos or with gold on their teeth. Such intimate body-art gives a message about how gold and personal lives are entangled: together they form Gold Lifeways, pathways in which lives of people cross-connect with gold matters.

In public and in personal ways, artistic work in the Amazon highlights the role of gold in the development of regions and in the aspirations of individuals and communities. Interestingly, in West Africa and Uganda we do not find such clear examples of popular art engaging with artisanal mining. Gold mining itself maybe an art and items like a traditional gold balance maybe finely crafted. In Ghana gold has historically been used to craft objects symbolizing royalty, but around contemporary mining places there is little ARTistic work which takes up the theme of ARTisanal gold mining. This contrast between the Amazon and parts of Africa is most interesting. In the exhibition, African Artistic work on the Artisanal is represented by the work of two artists, both central collaborators in the Gold Matters project: Photographer Nii Obodai and Painter Christophe Sawadogo.

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The long presence of miners and mining culture in the Brazilian Amazon and the Guianas finds expression in local art works. Along the highway BR-163, it is impossible to miss the giant statues of garimpeiros at the entrance of villages. They are a tribute local people pay to the small-scale gold miners who are seen as significant pioneers of the Amazon. They act as a landmark claiming the identity of miners as explorers and developers, and champion gold mining for sustaining the local economy. The statues symbolize gold miners’ presence in the villages and their political position on land rights and the use of natural resources. This encounter of past, present, of old, and modern is also visible in local street art. The graffiti “Itaituba o Eldorado Encantado” (Itaituba, the enchanted Eldorado) embodies the interpretation of mining culture by the younger generation: a man with his gold pan. Such street art shows a romanticized image of the garimpeiro that hardly matches with the complex activity performed nowadays. In French Guiana public walls are also used for opposition to gold mining.

Personal adornment also symbolizes how gold mining is central to past and present personal lives. The large tattoo of a bulldozer on the arm of a garimpeiro reveals how working as a machine operator is the achievement of a life.  Miners often wear golden rings, necklaces, bracelets, and watches. These jewels have an intrinsic connection with the outcome of their work, being symbols of success, of a miner’s wealth. They embody the dream of all people who have come looking for prosperity.

Big Dreams: Life Built on Gold

Gold is almost never what miners want. Gold is a conduit for achieving their big dreams: a big house, school fees, artistic endeavors, a new life abroad, or a stable income. Portraits of gold miners focus on suffering, inferiority, and disconnectedness. Rarely are their lives documented as they are, driven by desires universal to everyone.

For some, the big dream feels like a mirage they can see but not reach. For others, the big dream morphs into a new one, once the previous dream comes true. This project documented the individual journeys to their dreams. It was a collaboration with Chinese journalist, Yiting Sun.

Initially, it was the gold trade, rather than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that provided the drive to build the imposing forts and castles along the shores of Ghana in the 1500s and 1600s.

I started working on this project in the immediate aftermath of a government crackdown on illegal gold miners in Ghana in June 2013. The crackdown followed conflict between local and Chinese miners, whom the government ordered from the country.

New Dreams: Imagining Gold Lives

“I am from the Centre Nord in Burkina Faso, where the desert is advancing, and where the climate and the seasons impact on our lives and on the movement of the population. My parents had to migrate to neighbouring Ivory Coast, “where the grass is greener”. I remained with my aunt. Like most of my classmates, I did a lot of kilometers every day. It resurfaces in my work and can explain the pieces of paper that I put on the roads in my neighborhood, on the mine trails. Likewise, terrorism affects parts of Burkina and thousands of people are leaving their areas of residence. I see it with my artistic means, with earth, my pencils, ink and carbon.”

“My aunt wanted me to become a medical doctor but at school in Ouagadougou, I already got interested in art and visited art gatherings and exhibitions. Women in my village heard of my art and I was summoned home. There was a ‘tribunal feminine’; the women interrogated: ‘We hear you are selling paper to white people, what are you doing?’  They worried whether I could make a living as an artist and whether prices for my work were decided in all honesty. With my aunt’s approval, I moved on into the world of art. My gallery is called ‘Maan Neere’. In Moore, my language, this means ‘to do beautiful/good’. Aesthetically appealing but also morally good – combining ‘le beau et le bien’ – it expresses why art matters: anything that is just is in itself beautiful and something that is beautiful should be just and help achieve justice.”

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Big Dreams: Life Built on Gold

New Dreams: Imagining Gold Lives