Christine Oatman's Stories of Innocence and Experience
Last week I had the chance to take in Christine Oatman’s installation, Stories of Innocence and Experience: Altered Mid-20th Century Children’s Books in Pedagogic Tableaux, at the Athenaeum Arts and Music Library in La Jolla, CA. The elements in the installation focused on the major cultural impacts of the 20th century like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and 9/11 (although that is early 21st). She also explores themes of citizenship, ethnic identity, capitalism, animal cruelty, and government overreach. This installation left me with a lot to ponder and a lot of unanswered questions about the so-called progress being made toward a more equitable future.
When first entering the space, I was greeted with the bright colors and iconography of a traditional school classroom. There is a chalkboard motif running around the room and different groupings of familiar, school-centric objects. A desk here, books all around on each piece. Colorful illustrations, maps, a chalkboard with cursive writing on one wall, and cut-outs of children. There is a row of vintage school desks along one wall, evoking the feeling of simpler times in the classroom. Each separate installation is set up with a child’s point of view in mind. Stories are told through stuffed animals, children’s books, building blocks, and toy soldiers. At first, the installation feels happy and nostalgic. It reminds me of playing school for hours with my mom as a child. I’ve always loved the iconography of school and the simple linearity of everything, like each drawing in a book being clearly labeled, D is for Duck. However, as the title suggests, the books, in this case, have been altered to tell different stories, ones not often told in school.
Each tableau was set up as though a child had just been playing, with a book open to several pages and toys scattered about. On close inspection, I could see that the books had been altered and added to, to give more details about the reality behind the fantasy of the book. For example, a Curious George in Space book has been altered to tell the story of the real monkey named Albert who was launched into space by the US in 1948. Albert died of suffocation during the flight. Albert was followed by three others (Alberts II, III, and IV) that all died during their space flights. The elements of the Curious George book remain, telling a happy story of an astronautical monkey getting ready for liftoff, excited and brave. The cartoonish illustrations of George in his spacesuit are contrasted with real photos and diagrams of Albert in his, much more restrictive and ugly-looking, suit. Feelings of childhood nostalgia mixed with unease and discomfort.
All of the pieces gave me this mix of remembering these childhood artifacts and my experience with them and being confronted with the new story Oatman was telling with these items. The colorful, clean and bright images of childhood iconography juxtapose wildly with the images Oatman has altered into the books. A particularly poignant piece shows a book opened to a poem about The Shadow Child, a poem about an imaginary friend in the form of a child’s shadow. On the facing page, Oatman shows the iconic image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, or Napalm girl, after her clothes were burned off her back in a napalm attack by Southern Vietnamese. Napalm girl assumes the same posture as the child playing with her shadow and there is an intensity of feeling between the two images. One gets the sense of the many Shadow Children that face atrocities around the world and of the ways our society has dovetailed to protect innocence through lack of information as well as corrupt it through violence and terror.
To say these pieces filled me with mixed emotions is not quite adequate. I was often filled with the feeling of what it must feel like to grow up. This feeling is one of those never-ending feelings, I suspect, as we are continually confronted with the faults of our own ignorance. The feeling of the first time we learned of the horrors of the world and that our parents and teachers had lied, to keep us safe but also to keep us ignorant, since ignorance is bliss. Oatman’s Stories of Innocence and Experience raised important questions like how much are we obligated to tell children? What is the best way to find out about that which is horrifying and often outside of our control? How do we ensure that the future is better than the past before it? I appreciate the title, Stories of Innocence and Experience, because it encapsulates the pulling apart one feels as they are confronted, for the first time, with the truth. Lost innocence comes through hard experiences. We are no longer naive because we have experienced the truth. We pulled the curtain back and the man was there, and he was ugly and cruel. There is no doubt that I will be thinking about this piece for a long time, both within the context of the show and what it means to me artistically. This exhibit masterfully combined the message with the medium, evoking a profound response. What the viewer is left with is more questions and a reflection of their own lost innocence or perhaps more accurately, how much innocence they have left.
