Lee Scratch Perry at MACRO

Artist: Lee Scratch Perry (with works by Rashiyah Elanga, Invernomuto, Ishion Hutchinson, Rammellzee, Zadie Xa)

Exhibition title: THE ORBZERVER

Venue: MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome, Italy

Date: March 16 – September 4, 2021

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

Jamaican pioneer musician, visual artist and “Upsetter” Lee Scratch Perry (1936–2021) is a figure that cannot be relegated or confined to a specific creative field. The exhibition at MACRO, the first institutional show dedicated to Perry since his death, includes twelve works by the artist in dialogue with contributions, which will enter the show progressively, from a group of multi-disciplinary creative figures, who differ in terms of geography and generation, but who together make explicit the complexity of the artist’s influence. Jamaican poet, Ishion Hutchinson, and the Italian artistic duo, Invernomuto, contribute works that act as a homage to Perry’s ongoing legacy. A sculpture by cult American artist, musician, underground graffiti writer and Afrofuturist icon Rammellzee (1960– 2010) brings us the street art scene of the 1980s in New York City, while the works of two emerging artists, Rashiyah Elanga and Zadie Xa, suggest two very different ways of constructing alternative realities made up of worldly, pop and spiritual elements.

Born Rainford Hugh Perry in a rural hamlet in Northwest Jamaica in 1961, he made his way to Kingston, where his career as a musician began. Perry worked at Studio One and he collaborated with producer Joe Gibbs, both experiences marked by a lack of artistic recognition. Perry, however, emerged from this early period with two of his most well-known songs: I am the Upsetter and People Funny Boy, the latter one of the earliest examples of sampling in musical history. In the beginning of the 1970s, Perry began working as a producer and founded Black Ark Studio (later The Black Ark). It was the beginning of dub music, a free-mix style that employs the layering of sounds, rooted in the unique disorder that comes from superimposing technology and spirituality, at once percussive, melodic and pop. It is at this juncture that he produced some of Bob Marley’s most renowned songs and became one of the pioneers of Reggae music. In 1979 The Black Ark burned down, along with everything it contained. Tapes, vinyl’s, studio equipment, and the first traces of Perry’s visual experimentations, all melted into the ground. The fire was deliberate, a response to Perry’s sense that the place was full of bad energy. This act of creative destruction (which would be repeated decades later in his studio in Switzerland) was a demonstration of Perry’s outsider, subversive spirit of resistance that spared no one, not even himself. And it set him on a new course. Soon after the fire, the “Upsetter” relocated to Europe and eventually settled in Switzerland.

In the late 1990s, Perry began to be recognized as a visual artist. His multidisciplinary practice, in which he involved his entire body and his physical surroundings, is characterised by a unique fusion of religious and symbolic belief systems including Christianity, Rastafarianism and Ettu (of West African origin, an elaborate ceremony performed by Yoruba-descended Jamaicans) as well as animist traditions. These influences are layered with symbols of consumer culture, such as corporate coats of arms and banking logos and bits and pieces of the devices that are emblematic of our hyper technological era. Collaged together they re-cast the way we read the recent history of things and the material world. Perry’s

path as a visual artist can be traced backwards in time through his music. In fact, it is only by placing them side-by-side that his music and artworks emerge as different, different because of the boundaries imposed by individual disciplines. The objects, both man-made and natural, that feature in Perry’s multimedia collage-works, however, are analogous to the sounds he explored while creating his music. The written words, large and small, which float and at times fight for space on his canvases, remind us of the existence of institutions like the I.M.F., but also of Genesis, Piss and Poop. His self-referential attitude became a form of activism; Perry is the Black Pope who told Margaret Thatcher and the Queen of England to heed his message and stop doing wrong. At once outside time and perfectly situated within the twentieth – and twenty-first-century capitalist era, Perry is now a timeless figure of political and cultural resistance. In his own words: “Technology is a robber who take what is not his. Technology is a thief.”

Lee Scratch Perry, THE ORBZERVER, Exhibition view, MACRO, 2022. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, TV Sculpture, 2020. Various materials (TV, stand, stuffed animals). Courtesy Estate of Lee Scratch Perry and suns.works, Zurich. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, THE ORBZERVER, Exhibition view, MACRO, 2022. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Rashiyah Elanga, My trip inside the Mesosphere sponsored by Magic Blue, 2020. Video, colour, sound 7’. Courtesy the artist; Rashiyah Elanga, Happy Underwood, 2020. Inkjet on paper. Courtesy the artist. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Invernomuto, Negus outtakes, 2022. 5HD videos, variable durations; Rasberry PI modules with Speakers; 7” LCD screens. Courtesy the artists and Pinksummer, Genoa. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, The Orbzerver in the Star House, 2012. Marker and collage on inkjet prints. Courtesy Estate of Lee Scratch Perry and suns.works, Zurich; Lee Scratch Perry, Laptop (Black Ark), ca. 2009. Collage and tape reels on laptop. Courtesy Estate of Lee Scratch Perry and suns.works, Zurich. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, THE ORBZERVER, Exhibition view, MACRO, 2022. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Rammellzee, Fresco Love Letter, Bill of Fat, 1988. Found objects, resin and mixed media on wooden board. Courtesy Gallizia Collection, Paris. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, Genesis 2020. Collage and acrylic on paper. Courtesy Estate of Lee Scratch Perry and suns.works, Zurich. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, Untitled painting (Super Ape), 2019/20. Collage and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy Estate of Lee Scratch Perry and suns.works Zurich. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Lee Scratch Perry, THE ORBZERVER, Exhibition view, MACRO, 2022. Ph. Agnese Bedini, DSL Studio

Zadie Xa, Yung Abalone Iridescent Inlay on Sea Foam and Kelp, 2017. Synthetic hair on hand dyed, machine stitchehed and hand sewn fabric. Courtesy the artist; Zadie Xa, Benito Mayor Vallejo, Yung Abalone Iridescent Inlay on Sea Foam and Kelp, 2017. Hand sewn and machine stitched fabric, repurposed vintage leather, synthetic hair and hand carved wood. Courtesy the artists. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia, DSL Studio

Ishion Hutchinson, Circle, 2022. Casse in varie dimensioni, legno, poesia (The Ark by “Scratch”, 2017) Speakers in various dimensions, wood, poem (The Ark by “Scratch”, 2017) printed on paper, cotton table cloth, wax. Courtesy l’artista / the artist. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia, DSL Studio