Focal Point: Charmaine Lurch
Charmaine Lurch, Sycorax, 2015, Copper, aluminum and other mixed wires, Dimensions Variable, Photographer: Toni Hafkensheid, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Absence is a form of presence — the empty space takes the shape of what has been removed, erased or excluded. This can be a powerful thing. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there are nine references to Sycorax, but no actual appearance or utterance by the character. The name refers to the mother of Caliban, the grotesque half-human monstrosity and the only person on the island Prospero finds himself shipwrecked on.
Charmaine Lurch, Sycorax, 2015, Copper, aluminum and other mixed wires, Dimensions Variable, Photographer: Toni Hafkensheid, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Sycorax is a sorceress, referred to by Prospero as “foul” and a “damned witch.” The audience only comes to know Sycorax by how other characters describe her or refer to her; her life — that ends before the play begins — shapes the events that unfold. As an unseen character, the presence/absence of Sycorax is important to the play’s plot. Yet despite her absence, as literary scholar Kinitra Brooks puts it, “Sycorax is present without the need for either a body or a voice,” and she “remains spiritually and psychologically present and powerful.”[1] This dynamic tension between her absence and her influence within The Tempest has made her a figure of fascination.
Some literary scholars consider Sycorax to be racialized as a Black or Arab woman due to her storied origin being from Algiers, and these scholars consider her silence and absence to underscore this understanding. Many Black writers, scholars and artists refer to Sycorax in this manner, and consider her a symbolic literary figure through which to investigate Blackness and womanhood.
Charmaine Lurch, 2015, Photo: Anne Zbitnew
Among these, multidisciplinary artist Charmaine Lurch is drawn to the figure of Sycorax, with several works that reference the character. Her sculpture Revisiting Sycorax (2015-present) is made from various metallic wires — iron, copper, aluminum, brass — and stands up to 11 feet tall. Lurch’s Sycorax is an impossible figure with an enchanting presence; gender studies professor Karyn Recollet describes the sculpture as “porous, holey, and in constant renegotiation with itself.”
This article is an excerpt and and is available in full in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Studio Magazine.
