To Charm Guns and Other Arms
To Charm Guns and Other Arms is a heliogravure reproduction of the first page of a prayer book, prayers for protection that Joseph Bernes, a gold prospector from Saint Lucia who came to Guyana in the 1930s, patiently copied down so that he could live in peace in the Amazon rainforest. Traces of this prayer can be found in a collection published in 1820 by John George Hohman, and its sacred character is enhanced by the technique of heliogravure printing, which echoes light as a manifestation of the divine presence in Christianity. The prayer originated in the Creole Christian Pow-Wow theology practised by the indigenous populations of Pennsylvania and repressed between 1880 and 1934. The work is part of Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s multidisciplinary approach as an artist, researcher, exhibition curator, and film programmer, as well as his decolonial approach. His subjective approach as an artist raises this text to the status of a work of art, bringing out of oblivion a cultural testimony which had been almost entirely suppressed until the end of the twentieth century.