From the Artist
This work, along withParadisiacal View, is meant to commemorate the life and contributions of El Hajj Malik Shabazz, more commonly known as "Malcolm X."These pieces indicate a new direction for me because they tap into new source material, that of traditional Islamic art,particularly the practices of ceramics and manuscript illumination. In my use of this material, I have tried to be true to what initially attracted me to it, but at the same time, I have tried to filter it through my particular experience and history. In these pieces, I have attempted to do this by utilizing the contemporary figure of Malcolm X as a subject, and by bringing in redactedFBI memorandums to relate his historyand visually to act as a type of calligraphy.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records
In Paradasiacal View and Illuminated Page from a Manuscript, Jamal Cyrus presents seemingly mundaneand iconic images from Malcolm X's life story (his eyeglasses and a page from his FBI file) in the decorative style of elaborate marbled paper. The “illuminated manuscript” is in fact the opposite—aredacted copy of a document in Malcolm X's FBI file. Cyrus's artistic practice is heavily influenced by the history of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,its subsequent collapse in the 1970s into splintered movements, and the appropriation of its styles by mainstream culture.
—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records
