Fishy Empire

Fishy Empire Commentary by jione Havea Cite Share Show Bible Passage Read by Ben Quash An artwork can put an entire story on one page. But there is only so much that a page can take, and artists are selective about who and what they foreground or ignore. In this Eritrean painting from the 1940s, by an Ethiopian priest whose name is not known, Jonah slides out of the mouth of the fish. He has a smooth landing, with his hair, beard, and clothes in place. The tail of the fish stands up like the tower of a castle, as if to suggest that the fish stands in for the empire. This work lets Nineveh off the hook, so to speak (see also, Lindsay 2016). The power (read: effect of being in the belly) of the empire (fish) did not affect Jonah. He slides out of the empire and goes into the city where he sits to preach, from a text. He has words, and his audience are groomed and priestly. They are all men, with eyes wide open, and their arms, crossed over their chests, suggest reverence, not wariness or resistance (as folded arms can sometimes do). There is no hint of wickedness in Jonah’s audience. Nineveh was not wicked; the people of Nineveh did not need to repent. This painting is about ‘men’s secret business’, to borrow a phrase from Indigenous Australians. Men’s secret business has to do with ceremonies, rituals, and rites of passage. Men in all cultures have secret business, and i wonder if the Ethiopian artist had something Ethiopian in mind to add to the biblical narrative. There are plants in this work which, with the sea, are critically needed in modern carbon-producing civilizations. Could these plants be evidence of something Ethiopian (as asked above): symbolizing something meaningful in an Ethiopian context? There are no women, children, or animals in this painting. I wonder if they have been drowned by the sea, which takes up more than half of the painting. Such a view of the sea is not so strange in our climate-changed world, where women, children, and animals are at the frontline of climate crises (see also, Elvey 2016). References Elvey, Anne. 2016. ‘Complex Anachronism: Peter Porter’s Jonah, Otherkind, Ancient and Contemporary Tempests, and the Divine’, The Bible & Critical Theory, 12: 79–93. Available at https://www.bibleandcriticaltheory.com/issues/vol12-no1-2016/vol-12-no-1-2016-complex-anachronism-peter-porters-jonah-otherkind-ancient-and-contemporary-tempests-and-the-divine/ [accessed on 31 July 2023] Lindsay, Rebecca. 2016. ‘Overthrowing Nineveh: Revisiting the City with Postcolonial Imagination’, The Bible & Critical Theory, 12: 49–61. Available at https://www.bibleandcriticaltheory.com/issues/vol12-no1-2016/vol-12-no-1-2016-overthrowing-nineveh-revisiting-the-city-with-postcolonial-imagination/ [accessed 31 July 2023]