Caroline Giles Banks

Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA The Eye of the BeholderIn the Company of Burtynsky and Basho Edward Burtynsy’s photographs are stories of human alterations to the Earth. Taken using drones and fixed-wing aircraft these depict large-scale industrial projects and their effect on the environment. I am especially drawn to a photo of the tailings pond of an African diamond mine. Seen from the air, it appears almost beautiful, like a massive flower with its black-and-white petals opened and impressed upon the ground. I am reminded of Basho’s words: How admirable!to see lighting and not thinklife is fleeting Translation…

By Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Silent Waters An Installation by Pritika Chowdhry, 2023 Chowdhry’s 101 larger-than-life ceramic feet placed on opposite sides of a twisted line memorializes those who died in the violence during the partition of India in 1947. jet black containers Once filled with salt water the hollow clay feet are lined with the residue of crystallized salts.  the dried tears I want to defy the museum’s security system, to step over the rope barricade, and place my feet next to theirs. Together to jump over history’s crooked lines.  of memory Cattails (October 2023) *See “Conflict Between…

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA In its March 2025 quarterly update theOxford English Dictionary added 42 new words from other languages. The words do not have direct English equivalents. The list includes gigil, from the Philippines, an intense feeling when seeing someone or something cute; blaa, from Irish English, a soft white-floured bread associated with Waterford, Ireland; and alamak, a Malaysian word expressing shock or outrage. Simultaneously, hundreds of English words and phrases disappeared from U.S. Government documents. Many words erased from these documents relate to D.E.I. and transgender issues and initiatives. Forbidden words include: race, trans, intersectionality, Indigenous, tribal, ethnicity, activism, gender, pronoun, sociocultural, Black, female, disabled,…

By Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA His hut hidden in the rainforest from outsiders, the last known member of an Amazonian tribe is found lying in his hammock covered in feathers. Decades earlier those greedy for the tribe’s land and resources murdered almost all his kin with poisoned sugar. Like a keepsake wedding suit, the funereal garb of brilliant bird feathers reflects planning and preparation, readiness and ritual. His death is a harbinger of the accelerating annihilation and disappearance of untold numbers of cultures and peoples—not unlike the mass extinction of other species—due to the cumulative effects of deliberative and…

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA Hagia Sophia, the magnificent complex in Istanbul, was built in the 6th century as a Christian church, then repurposed as a mosque in the 15th century during the Ottoman Empire. Under Ataturk, founder of the secular Republic of Turkey, it opened in 1935 as a museum, before becoming a mosque again in 2020. prayer rugsbeside Doric columnsbending the same knee Ever reminding us of Christianity’s and Islam’s shared historical origins, the syncretic amalgamation of mosaics depicting Christianity with soaring minarets is an enduring testament to the power of art and architecture to reflect our common…

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA August 2024. Afghan women must veil their bodies completely in public—faces included. The Taliban muzzles women, forces them to devolve into cells of silence. No speaking in public. No singing and reading aloud from inside their houses. ‘Na Fatima Ahmadi. Na Ghezaal Enayat. Na nas.’ Imagine Afghan women creating a dialect of defiance and resistance. Linguists among them help to make up a ‘she’ code, a fundamental grammar of clicks and whistles, squeaks and squawks, taps and slaps—covers from other inmates, other species. Over bread ovens, wash tubs, and clotheslines mothers and daughters, sisters and…

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA She knows how to swim. She does not want to swim.Her hesitation is more than about wet hair. Her gutfeels the diasporic trauma of her African ancestors’relationship to water. time-space conundrum Before 2015 the watery graveyard of hundreds ofslave ships in the Middle Passage was a murky void.Maritime archaeologists with the Slave Wrecks Projectnow explore the ships. Divers—many of them Blackwomen and men new to scuba diving— touch the wrecks,bring up mud, wood, iron objects (kettles to cannons) for study. the past before Linking these finds to historic records, the teams namethe ships, map their…