Artworks

REDEMPTION SONG (2014)

Artist Commentary | Ashleigh Sumner April 2023

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
‘Cause none of them can stop the time

How long shall they kill our prophets While we stand aside and look? Ooh, some say it’s just a part of it We’ve got to fullfill the book

Won’t you help to sing These songs of freedom? ‘Cause all I ever have Redemption Songs Redemption Songs Redemption Songs”

-Bob Marley, Redemption Song – 1980

The use of text is a cornerstone of my practice. So much of my work is inspired from the writing of poets, civil rights leaders, and musicians. Bob Marley is the rare individual who encapsulates all three of these categories.

Redemption Song would be Marley’s last track on his last album, Uprising. Redemption Song was a drastic departure from the iconic, heavy reggae beats Marley was internationally known for. Instead, it is a ballad that’s both contemplative and spiritual. Marley had been battling cancer for years before the recording of Uprising. It’s quite possible he knew this would be his last work. Less than a year after the release of “Uprising,” Bob Marley would be dead at the age of 36.

The lyrics to “Redemption Song” are graffitied throughout this 8ft x 8ft diptych work created in 2014 in my Los Angeles studio. Like other works created during this period, stenciled block letters have a strong presence in the painting. In the case of “Redemption Song” the stenciled phrase, “City of Angels” is predominant.

The Angel of the Waters sculpture that sits atop Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain is the cardinal visual in Redemption Song. The eight-foot bronze sculpture was the 1860’s masterpiece of lesbian sculptor, Emma Stebbins. It is considered the earliest public artwork by a woman in New York City. In Redemption Song, the collaged image of Stebbins’ angel is distressed, mirrored and blind-folded.

The Bethesda Fountain was installed in Central Park in 1873 to commemorate the opening of the Croton Aqueduct. Before the aqueduct, New York was ravished by deadly cholera epidemics, particularly in the summer 1832. The Croton Aqueduct would ensure that New Yorkers would never run out of fresh water again thus ending a cycle of disease. To memorialize the innovation, Emma Stebbins created The Angel of the Waters sculpture as a symbol of healing after sickness. Generations later, an image of the sculpture formed the backdrop to the iconic final scene of Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America; a play depicting the affliction of the AIDS epidemic.

In 2023, nearly three years removed from the onset of a worldwide pandemic, the legacy of The Angel of the Waters has an even more powerful and deepening resonance. I have often used the image of Stebbins’ sculpture as a symbol of hope and blind faith during the most challenging of circumstances.