Fe Head: The Political Potency of Omari Ra

KEVARNEY K.R.

This review was produced during the Critical Writing Workshop organized by the Jamaica Art Society and Contemporary&, April 11-13, 2024. 

Napalm and gun smoke paint the foreground, hellfire and brimstone burn through the horizon, Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ scores the scene. Afrikan’s Fe Head is a politically potent painting produced in the fiery crucible of Kingston’s underbelly during the height of Jamaica’s most tumultuous political divide. The piece serves as both a declaration and confession from the artist and political actor, who was engulfed in the turmoil that pervaded the capital city during the eighties. This striking portrait is emboldened by the flaming oranges that melanate the subject’s skin while simultaneously blazing in the backdrop. Afrikan is known for his political stridency and scathing social satire, but this work seems to be a serious article of political propaganda.

The image of the bold, black-helmeted head set against an orange backdrop ought to be familiar to most voting-aged Jamaicans because every four to five years it resurrects to reimpose itself onto the collective consciousness. Using his canvas as his ballot, Afrikan publicly puts his ‘x’ beside the head. The year 1988 is remembered among Jamaicans for the devastation that infamous Hurricane Gilbert delivered to the already struggling Small Island Developing State (SIDS). This category five hurricane postponed the general election to 1989  when Manley’s People’s National Party (PNP) would similarly storm the Seaga-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) from parliamentary majority. Afrikan’s brooding portrait seems to prophesy the PNP’s fiery resurgence to political power after being starved of it for nine years.

PNP logo on voting ballot.

Fe Head is a mixed media painting but appears to have been composed using a primarily graphic medium, possibly charcoal or pastel, rendered on paper sized 95.6 cm by 63.5 cm, a standard size for many of Afrikan’s early works.¹ The artwork was painted early in the artist’s oeuvre, shortly after graduating from the Jamaica School of Art. Notably he signed it ‘African’ a name he would update to ‘Afrikan’ later in his career. The artist’s choice of medium is important to the conceptual underpinnings of his work, as he aptly aligns his media in accordance with his political assertions. To challenge the Eurocentric axiologies of the fine arts establishment, Afrikan exclusively uses unorthodox materials in opposition to Art’s biased conventions. The artist’s intention is to decisively distinguish his work from the bigoted canon of western art history.²

Also noteworthy is the fact that this painting entered the collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica through the Guy McIntosh Donation, a selection of “provocative, politically incorrect and challenging” artworks presented to the institution by the eponymous collector³. Fe Head was most recently shown at the National Gallery in its Selections from the National Collection: New Dialogues (2023) exhibition. It was hung on the first floor, between a carefully considered and overtly political Everald Brown painting The Earth is the Lord (1969), and an equally politically charged Ras Dizzy painting The Warship (1998). This sequence of three paintings represent a clear curatorial thread focusing on the concept of political behaviour: war, in particular.

Figure 1. Fe Head. (1988). Mixed media on paper. 95.6 x 63.5 cm. The Guy McIntosh Collection, The National Gallery of Jamaica

The title Fe Head refers to the chemical symbol for iron, “Fe”, derived from the Latin ferrum, suggesting that the subject is an “iron man”; an emotionless, inhuman entity. Afrikan’s iron man is set squarely in the frame and peers outits with an intense targeted stare, its pupils like two fiery apertures affixed in the slanted sockets used for its eyes. Much of the face’s detail is composed of rectangular shapes that serve as metal panels. These panels are lined with very tiny tacks while its nostrils are fastened with two large screws. The mechanical humanoid seems devoid of any humanity, lacking all sensitivity and personhood. The figure appears to be wearing an M1 combat helmet similar to the ones worn by the soldiers in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. Clearly the subject is at war.

Afrikan’s portrait also bears a conspicuous resemblance to the soldier pictured in The 2000 Yard Stare by artist, historian and war correspondent Thomas Lea III. First published in LIFE Magazine’s 1945 issue, “Marines Call It That 2000 Yard Stare”, the painting depicts a real-life United States Marine, utterly devastated by his horrific experiences at the Battle of Peleliu, between the US and Japan during World War II⁴. The Marine’s eyes are widened with a vacant, distant stare, evidence of his complete detachment from the terrors surrounding him. This image has become widely associated with combat stress reaction, battle fatigue, or shellshock, conditions experienced by soldiers and survivors of war .⁵ Even though  Afrikan denies that Thomas Lea’s painting was an influence for Fe Head, the similarities between the works, in terms of subject, theme, and composition, warrant a critical comparison of the two⁶.

The 2000 Yard Stare by Thomas Lea. LIFE Magazine (1945)

The Marine is the focal point of Lea’s painting, but unlike Fe Head, he is not centred, instead he is positioned in the lower-left quadrant of the frame. Behind him is a bombarded landscape sparsely populated with fatigued Marines with L-2 Grasshoppers flying in the distance overhead. Lea clearly depicts the Marine as a victim of warfare, one who has suffered the devastations of modern military combat first-hand resulting in his becoming emotionally and spatially detached from his environment.

In contrast, Afrikan renders his subject not as a victimised human being, but as a cold combatant who, faced with hostilities, adopts a hardened exoskeleton as a mechanism for survival. This was the lived reality of many Black Kingstonians during the 1970s and 80s during the height of the city’s pervasive political violence. Reflecting on that period in an interview with me, Afrikan remarked that “Inna dem days deh yuh affi be an Iron Man fi survive!”⁷

As a historian and war correspondent, Lea adequately captures the agony, trauma and emotional detachment experienced by US Marines at the Battle of Peleliu but Afrikan’s painting transcends mere documentation. Fe Head is far more analytical and inventive in its statement on the use of political violence. The iron man is not merely a moral subject, but an actor endowed with agency and motivated to violence. The iron man is a product of its environment who consequently becomes a perpetuator of the very circumstances that forced its being. Thus, the iron man bears culpability but holds no remorse, for it must survive in this vicious cycle. If the artist himself is considered to be the iron man, then this painting ought to be seen as an admission of guilt.

But Fe Head offers more than just personal testimony, it is a damning indictment of the State. In this interpretation, the State is brought into question for its so-called monopoly on the use of legitimate violence. Afrikan accuses the State of being a calculated and uncaring mechanism that functions to fulfil its own interests. Using its coercive apparatus, i.e. the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the Jamaican state officiated over the political violence that unfolded in the urban battlefields of Kingston. Only the State possesses the legitimate authority to enact violence against its own citizens, and by enforcing this authority it converts inner-city communities into blazing blast furnaces from which several iron men will emerge.

This indictment goes beyond the State itself to include those political representatives who wage war to capture their seats in parliament. The first-past-the-post electoral system is often referred to as the “winner-takes-all” system, and during the 1970s and 80s Jamaican politicians would adopt a “win-by-any-means-necessary” approach. This strategy included the use of political violence against non-supporters. If this then is the profile of the iron man, both Michael Manley and Edward Seaga would be perfect candidates for the role. Even a general review of the available literature on Jamaica’s modern political history will reveal frequent mentions of “garrisons”, “dons/area leaders”, “clientelism”, “patronage”, “curry goat politics”, “political tribalism”, and of course “corrupt politicians”. This is an indication of the pertinence and pervasiveness of these issues, as well as how widely acknowledged they are as problems within the Jamaican political system.

The infamous 1980 Jamaican general election was held when Afrikan was twenty years old; old enough to cast his vote, and old enough to fight in war. The 1980 general election is recorded as the bloodiest in the nation’s history with official police statistics reporting that at least 844 people were murdered as a result of politically motivated violence⁸. This included 153 old women who perished at the Eventide Home in a fire ignited by arsonists⁹. One cannot overstate how disruptive this was to the social cohesion of the nation-state. The resulting divide between the supporters of the two parties has persisted in many Kingston communities to this day.

Afrikan’s Fe Head may be a reluctant foot soldier of the apocalypse or the very orchestrator himself. The iron man is a dichotomous figure because it represents both the subject of political repression, who was forced to adopt a galvanised exoskeleton for survival, as well as the personification of the State as a cruel, inhumane mechanism that monopolises political violence. Fe Head is thus a placeholder for the garrison don and the politician who funds him; it symbolises those who kill to live, and those who live to kill.

Notes

1. Veerle Poupeye, “Omari S. Ra – Afrikan (b. 1960),” National Gallery of Jamaica, January 24, 2010,
2. Omari Ra, “Omari Ra,” in Pressure: Kingston Biennial 2022 Exhibition Catalogue, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston: MAPCO Printers Limited, 2022, 156 – 161.
3. National Gallery of Jamaica, The Guy McIntosh Donation Catalogue, (Kingston: Phoenix Printery Limited, 2011). Phoenix Printery Limited, 4 -28.
4. Thomas Lea III, “Peleliu: Tom Lea Paints Island Invasion,” LIFE Magazine, June 11, 1945.
5. Larry Decuers, “WWII Post Traumatic Stress,” The National WWII Museum, June 26, 2020,.
6. Interview with Omari Ra conducted by Kevarney K.R. at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, September 23, 2023.
7. Ibid.
8. HG Helps, “The Bloody General Election That Changed Jamaica,” Jamaica Observer, October 30, 2012,
9. Ibid.