How dare he, really!? Fausin’ with a foundational American document! Such is the freedom of our American citizen-poet, José Faus, beloved son of Bogotá and Kansas City, lurking with laser precision, paying acidic attention, noticing fleeting truths and beauties, that we might imagine scribbled as notes and drawings in a grubby spiral chapbook with a found golf pencil with good eraser or an always working Beaver Trucking ballpoint.
Since timing, and therefore context, is everything, Citizen José Faus has done a deep textual dive into the United States Declaration of Independence, on the eve of its imminent 250th anniversary, and let’s just say somebody got a new box of fat chisel tip markers and got to fixin’ things.
Brief civics refresher — remember that time 13 American settler colonies declared themselves independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain whilst laying out 27 colonial complaints, chock full of furious “For…this’s” and “He has’s” then signed by 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress?
That same U.S. Declaration of Independence still packs a wallop as a worthy assertion of human rights. As a statement of principles, it contains the most quoted and argued over lines ever in American literature. Faus, with tattoo artist skills, somehow enhances its flaws by magnifying them. His poems show us how the Declaration continues to be an important mirror of ideological shifts in political philosophy, cracking open some salty new readings.
In the first of ten poems identically framed and neatly hung around the Central Library’s Guldner Gallery, Faus wasn’t shy with his marker. It’s shocking at first to see such a famous and important document marked up so radically. Gives a person ideas. Thus, we follow the poet into challenging new territory, wondering if we might try something like this ourselves. His blackout poems reorient this historic human rights document into versions of visual-textual objects. The work offers an engaging hand-to-brain presence, asking us to decode textual subtractions marked up for multiple meanings.
At the top of each blackout poem we recognize that familiar old-timey script and birth date: “In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. / The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.” But just below the heading, a double thick horizon line sweeps us to the poet’s preferred starting point, hinted at in the exhibition title. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Sounds great, right?
This famous line tops the artist-poet’s imposing wall of layered horizontal swipes. The blackouts swamp the document like Gerhard Richter smeared paint back and forth with his rubber paddle. Lines arc gently inward from the right and left sides. At several points near the middle territory, lines meet and overlap, fracturing the author’s inky redaction. Ghostly streaks of script remain hidden between the relentless lines, then a sudden window of script for us to piece together: “unless those people / We / denounce / as / enemies.” With all other text blacked out, Faus leaves the original signers intact at the bottom of the poem, suggesting their implied intent to exclude “those people.” We wonder who are the “enemies” exactly?
Faus varies the next poem with the stripped-down heading, “a Declaration.” He begins in the same spot but goes in a different direction; “We hold these truths…” then takes his machete marker to “men,” “creator,” and “King of Great Britain.” Turns out those edits bring us nearer to our current moment with different referents. “The history of the present / is a history of repeated injuries” the poem goes. Pick your favorite “He” villain — of many! Curiously the author redacts all of the original signers but one, Josiah Bartlett, a New Hampshire physician.”If the poem’s grievous “He has” list is symptomatic, then this is one sick semiquincentennial puppy.”
Poems #5 and #8 go to an unassailable sore spot that forever complicates the American experiment. Both works spill copious ink to remind us of “the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages,” who were unambiguously denounced as “Enemies,” effectively excluded from the unalienable rights of “We.” Poem #8, again begins with “We hold these truths…” followed by the one-two blackout punch of “or”/ “not” indicating the highly unequal application of equality. We cringe contemplating how America started versus how it’s going.
An anarchic ray of hope beams from the end of Poem #6: “We / in the name and by the authority of the Good People / declare that these / ought to be Free and Independent / that they are absolved from all allegiance / and that all political connection between them and the state / is and ought to be totally dissolved. / For the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.” Indeed, the stakes could not be higher. Faus hones the message again in Poem #10, finding those same “Good People” have every right to be fully sovereign from “the State,” (insert bad state actor here).
Faus redacts all signatures in these two poems. They feel closest to the citizen-poet’s voice appealing to We, the free-thinking Good People at the Library engaging these poems, la Buena Gente, the citizens with unalienable rights who take home the complimentary pocket copy of The Constitution for further study (one per user please), tyvm. Wait, who are We even, now? These works certainly stir up our perspectives forcing us to renew our “We’s,” “He’s,” and “enemies.” More importantly, which truths are we still holding? And for whom?
“We hold these truths” is exactly what we need our artists to be doing right now. Rip away the filters/hypocrisies/falsities and show us better versions of everything!
José Faus: We Hold These Truths continues at the Guldner Gallery, Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., through May 3. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, kclibrary.org/exhibitions.
