All In The Family, 2024, 16 x 12 inches, Oil on hardboard
Midnight Kiss, 2024, 16 x 10 inches, Oil on hardboard
The Bogeyman, 2024, 20 x 15 inches, Oil on hardboard
Sitting On The Couch, 2024, 12 x 10 inches, Oil on hardboard
At The Tea Party , 2024, 17 ½ x 15 ½ inches, Oil on hardboard
Soul Murder, 2025, 18 x 16 inches, Oil on hardboard
“Look Away, This Is Too Close for Comfort”
ISIS SEMAJ-HALL
Welcome. Step inside. Make yourself at home in Roberta Stoddart’s newest six-piece painting series “All in the Family.” See how the house is so clean, the tea set is so fine, and the family looks so nice? Shirts and ties for the boys, a babydoll dress and bows for the baby girl. Father in his best suit. Mother in her good pearls. The house is so clean and the family looks so nice. Look at the care put into prettying-up.
Now look again. Look more closely. Look at how nice posing and nice posturing distract us. Look at what nice things conceal. Look at the painting titled “All in the Family” and notice the ominous shadow on the wall. Look at the downcast gaze of the two youngest children positioned by the chaise. Look closely at Daughter and notice what is not a shadow, but a stain on her inner thigh. Look closely at Father. Look from face to feet. Look at his bare legs and bedroom slippers. Ask yourself why he is under- if not undressed from the waist down. Look at “At the Tea Party.” Look at the tense distance between Mother and Daughter. Do not look away from the blood stain on Daughter’s inner thigh. Look at “Soul Murder.”
Do not look away from Mother as she focuses on cleaning the blood that runs down Daughter’s inner thigh. Ask yourself what or who caused her to bleed there. Do not look away from Daughter as she cries while mother quietly wipes her blood in the foreground and the menacing shadow dances on the wall in the background. Do not look away as you begin to connect the polka dots and squares across the six paintings. Shift your gaze to “Midnight Kiss” and then to “The Bogeyman” and see Father descending upon Daughter. Look at Daughter, who is too young to blame, too much a baby to be a victim, too asleep to stop him, too small to consent, too little to do anything but cry. Look at Father, who believes innocent Daughter will not know that this is wrong. Look at Father, who thinks baby Daughter will not remember. Look at Father, who thinks Daughter is his to do with as he wishes. Look closely and you will see all that is concealed under the prettying-up.
In her newest series, Jamaican visual artist Roberta Stoddart takes on the discomforting task of inviting viewers into the Caribbean home-space to interrogate and disrupt the practice of incest, a reality we shudder to face and stammer to speak of in the Caribbean. Over six oil paintings, none larger than 20 x 15 inches, Stoddart tells the story of a Caribbean family attempting to hide wounds of incest inflicted within the home. There is meaning in everything. The painted family’s commitment to 1960s British decor raises subtle questions about colonial independence. The tea set and tea party highlight the ways that etiquette is feminized and performative.
The Mother character’s gold chain, gold rings, and gold cuffs offer a prickly comment on patriarchal possession, bought silence, gendered financial dependence, and status anxiety. The Son characters stand or sit complacently on the margins with propped arms that appear weak and suggest no protection from Father or for Daughter. The Daughter character survives the trauma of her babyhood (shown in “Midnight Kiss” and “The Bogeyman”) only to endure further sexual assault from Father as a toddler and the additional abuse of nightmarish memory and her family’s silence (shown in “All in the Family,” “At the Tea Party,” and “Soul Murder”). Finally, the appearance of the Father as a Bogeyman (depicted in both the flying-man-with-claws and the shadow-man) overtly turns our attention to the traumatic impact of incest to haunt all of its victims, both the direct and indirect victims of this abuse.
Each painting in the “All in the Family” series, like each member of the family, highlights the muted terror of living under toxic patriarchy and reveals the devastating truth about incest in Caribbean families. Here incest is the open secret that is maintained through an impenetrable silence spurred by the inescapable dread of shame. Stoddart, a Jamaican artist living in Trinidad, is able to portray with painful nuance the complicated actions and inactions associated with this taboo in this part of the world. There is no doubt that Stoddart knows what we all know as Caribbean people. In the Jamaica that raised us both, we famously tek bad ting mek joke, allowing us to laugh off the moans from behind the shed where cousin and cousin ah bwoil good soup.
In the Caribbean we inhabit, we do not call the granduncle who makes only the prettiest baby nieces sit too long and too awkwardly on his lap a molester. Instead, we hold our breath when we place our daughters in his arms and whisper a quiet prayer that uncle may finally be too old to figgle with this princess. Where I exist, we do not look child rapists in the eye and call them what they are, no. Instead, we cast our eyes down and slant our language away from directness and honesty. Why mash up the whole family on account of a likkle toning, a likkle seasoning, a likkle touch? Here, mummy-aunty-granny sing hush, baby hush more as a command than a comfort and they soothe themselves with the hope that pikni cyaa remember.
In the Jamaica-Trinidad- Barbados-Guyana-Bahamas that I know, we sit outside on plastic chairs or a stone ledge or a soft settee sipping rum. And if the liming leads the conversation to that certain someone who we know did that thing, we shift our weight and our eyes, opting to stare blankly into the night rather than tearfully at each other. With our eyes cast down we shake our heads in what looks like disappointment then kiss our teeth and mumble how shameful it is that Mister Man interfere with him daughter. We agree with sourly pursed lips, never thinking for a moment that this tight mouth gesture is how we stop the flow of words we dare not say. We nod with what looks like agreement, not aware that this up and down gesture may be a reflexive attempt to shake loose the images and sounds of abuse from our minds. In my Caribbean, for our own self-protection we slant language – body and oral – towards the more obscure.
Look again at Daughter, so deeply violated by Father, so isolated and betrayed by Mother. Daughter, robbed of trust and innocence, will bear incest’s tremendous weight forever. No matter how far Daughter goes from home, the lifelong impact of incest will follow her. So, look closely even though it hurts. Look at Daughter and this time look with empathy. For too long we in the Caribbean have been conditioned to look away, to shame and shun victims of incest in order to preserve our own comfort. We find metaphors and similes to soften its sting, we speak proverbs to laugh it away, and we hush ourselves.
With this body of work Roberta Stoddart asks us to do more. The “All in the Family” series demands that we stop looking away and start protecting our children. No more hiding behind pretty posturing. No more posing to pretend all is well at home. Do not look away from Daughter, from Mother, from Sons, or from Father. No more looking away. No more dismissal and no more denial. We must face reality as it is. Daughter’s trauma is not hers alone; all ah we is one. With Stoddart’s “All in the Family” series as our uncomfortable motivation, let us gather the guidance and support needed to heal both the direct and indirect victims of this most unforgivable familial abuse.
All in the Family
ROBERTA STODDART
In my series “All In The Family”, we enter the world of Caribbean monsters and their victims. We enter into Taboo. We creep into Horror.
“Say nothing and it may not be true,” writes Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea.
The trauma inflicted by incest is far-reaching, both within the family and in the broader community. Silence is a by-product of patriarchal systems that demand allegiance to abusers, often even to criminality. Shame dominates our thinking and actions to such an extent that sufferers end up surviving, not living. They inhabit half of a life. Shame needs to be exposed to the light to stop the perpetuation of incest, generation after generation.
To the little girl in my paintings…you were a woman when I met you once when I myself was a child. I remember you as welcoming, gentle, and kind. I did not know of your terrible past, shrouded in secrecy by your family. Those outside your family who knew or suspected were equally silent and complicit. Many years later, when I learned what had happened to you, my heart broke. I know that the Monster came to you in darkness, not in light. There was no one to help you. You were completely betrayed by every member of your family, by degree. Your life was defined for you by the cowardice and complicity of others, and by the denial and lies that grew and grew. How did you stay alive when your wounding was so deep? You were drowned in the world, suffocated, your lungs filled with terror, lies and tears. Your heart fluttered from birth until death, trapped in a cage of shame. You hated the Monster. You hated yourself. You survived but never really lived. Until death did you both part.
My art is the impossible task of bringing this disturbing and sad story to light. It is my duty as an artist to authentically respond to what I have witnessed and observed in my life and in the lives of others. Horror is a language through which I can enter trauma. In creativity I can wield vengeance against the Monsters who have laid waste to their victims. We, the viewers, become somehow complicit by participating in the visual experience. This tense engagement also offers us an opportunity to re-consider societal laws and our own morals.
“We can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world.” — Jean Rhys
