Let in the Light

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Unfortunately it still remains the case that, in the art world, disability and mental health make great art but only as long and one doesn’t speak about said disability or mental health condition. Sigh! We still don’t have the vocabulary to exhibit art that emanates from a rehabilitative process. As a reader of ancient literature, she writes, “most of what I see in English Bibles is loss: the loss of sound, the loss of literary imagery, the loss of emotion, and — inevitably, because these texts were performances deeply integrated into the lives of the authors and early readers and listeners — the loss of thought and experience.” I was just really glad to hear that from people because they participate, as they ought to. They are part of this enterprise; so they can see why I did this, and they are still not buying it, and that’s good. I want them to be that interested and that active.” One can do some work toward equipping ordinands to inhabit the world of principalities and powers, of angels and demons, of spirit and soul and flesh, without acquainting oneself with the languages in which the people of God began to articulate their and our relation to that world; but one can travel more rapidly, deeper, more readily into that world by learning those languages, than by standing outwith those worlds and interacting only through the mediation of translators.” The Patois translation allows the Bible’s humour to come through, such as in Jesus’s words about the log in one’s eye, she says: “the way he says it would be like how my Dad would have said it.” Patois is a “very animated” language, she explains, with its origins in West Africa and some words taken directly from Twi. Sometimes, she notes, laughing, Jesus will ask “ee? ee?” when asking a question. “I just love it.”

James’ work is situational, it reacts or works within a situation and there is a sense of performance within that process. As James put it: In her introduction, she seeks to convey the sheer strangeness of the text, which “speaks to itself and not to me; there is no author in his familiar role, reaching out to me across the centuries and using all his training and ingenuity. The Gospels are an inward-looking, self-confirming set of writings, containing some elements of conventional rhetoric and poetics, but not constructed to make a logical or aesthetic case for themselves; the case IS Jesus; so the words don’t stoop to argue or entice with any great effort . . .” Yeah. I think I also kind of called the gallery out a little bit in the commissioning process. I asked them, ‘Why is this project labelled under an ‘engagement’ heading? Why aren’t we in the gallery as artists like everybody else?’”It’s really important, if it’s at all possible, to get people to the stage of being able to read another language for the sake of the other language rather than the purpose of just rendering it in English.” James and Chisenhale Gallery saw For they let in the Light, not as just another project for young people, but an opportunity for those who have faced mental health challenges to work with world-class artists and to create artworks which find their way into galleries – not as part of an education or engagement programme but as part of the gallery programme. As a result, Chisenhale has been building a team around their new Curator of Social Practice, Seth Pimlott, who oversaw the presentation of For They Let In the Light . One of the most striking features of the record is just how pure and modest Wright is in her presentation. There is virtually no flash and glitter to her music, enabling the success of the material to be based solely on the strength of her voice and writing. Vocally, Wright is mysterious, sultry, defiant and proud all at once, exhibiting both confidence and vulnerability. Active yet moody piano accompaniment. cleanly played electric guitars, and steady yet unobtrusive percussion guide many of the album’s arrangements, contributing to — and causing, in many instances — the unrefined, natural feel of the music. The development of this body of work has greatly altered the scale and ambition of James’s work, resulting in it becoming one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). Hearing this gives me hope that the arts are changing, and that those holding the purse strings are listening and accepting that the accumulation of funding for the disability arts sector is literally life-changing. A strong theme in the chapters that follows is the “large territories of meaning” in a single word of Greek and Hebrew and the impossibility of capturing these in the English one chosen.

I was delighted to have been invited to this sharing of For They Let In The Light , art made by young people from a CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) ward, which was shown at Chisenhale Gallery, London. I couldn’t make it in person and was invited to join remotely. What was evident from the art I witnessed was that these were not young people who had been taught how to be artists based on someone else’s definition. Instead, it was the art of these young people from a CAMHS ward, in their own words and actions, which they had been helped to feel confident to share with the wider world.

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AT THE inauguration was the true account, and this true account was with god, and god was the true account.” These words are unlikely to be read aloud at many carol services this month, but for Dr Sarah Ruden, this is what it sounds like to translate the Gospels “more straightforwardly than is customary”, to help the reader to “respond to the books on their own terms”. The Bible is gift,” she said. “It comes to us. But it is also ours to work at. It can be translated into all the different languages of the world without fear of losing its reality, because it’s a witness to the reality of God, rather than being that reality itself. . . The Bible’s story gets richer and richer and richer as more and more people come to be part of that story.” While she isn’t chary of criticising the language of the Greek, which can tend towards “dutifulness and dullness”, she is also utterly convinced of the importance of her task. The Bible is a book that matters, she writes. “We all to some degree define ourselves in relation to it, whether we mean to or not.” In For They Let In The Light one of the cripping aesthetics of that piece came in the second period of the making. The young people wanted to respond to the videos that had been made while they were in hospital and they wanted to perform them. And I’m like – that’s amazing”. I've spent fifty years translating Sanskrit texts, but only now has this book taught me how to read a text in a foreign language and how to read (and write) a translation. It is also a brilliant book about Latin, Augustine, God, and the meaning of life. Wendy Doniger, author of The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth