A Parable: The Answer is in your hands
Katie Knight
Helena, Montana
A Parable: The Answer is in Your Hands, 2018
Cyanotype Book
Who is complacent when their children are in danger?
Everyone’s children are in peril.
Who is complicit when their own children seem safe?
No privilege can protect.
How much insurance can assure safety?
No purchase can calm the storm, quench the fires, reverse extinction.
Whose children suffer?
Our children.
What will they experience as they become adults?
The answer is in your hands.
Images of children who hold emblematic objects represent the young and future generations who inherit the consequences of our actions. In their eyes, I see questions, doubt, and hope. My grandson, Kai-Biko, helped me make this book by writing the words of the title onto pages he tore from a neo-Nazi book of propaganda.
I created my photographs on fabric using cyanotype, an 1842 photographic printing process. This accordion-fold book is a flexible sculpture capable of different positions. As a clockwise swastika, it’s a Eurasian symbol for divinity and spirituality, the Buddha’s footprints, a Persian symbol for the revolving sun, and in the Dine culture, it signifies healing. Swastika is a Sanskrit word that means conducive to well-being, auspicious. Alternatively, the swastika could turn counterclockwise like the reviled Nazi symbol, an option emblematic of a choice between life-affirming justice and power-hungry fascism. We are at a critical juncture as a nation and a species. Will we succumb to fear and greed, or will we unify in a global movement to protect the rights of all beings and the living planet? The answer is in our hands.
Bio
Katie Knight’s life-long involvement with social justice movements shapes the content of her photography, printmaking, sculpture and writing. She and her partner, singer-songwriter Judy Fjell, support each other’s commitment to art action, now called social practice in current academic circles. They share a home base with two playful dogs in Helena, Montana. While serving as Curator of Education at the Holter Museum of Art, Knight spent 3 years creating the first edition of Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate. Since then, she has shepherded the evolving exhibition and provided educational programs at host venues. Knight earned an MFA in 1999 at the University of Minnesota, where she was awarded the prestigious national Jacob Javits Fellowship to support her visual arts practice and the use of art within context of human rights education. In fifty years as an educator, Knight has taught art, photography, art history, and interdisciplinary studies.
The concept for this book is based on a folk tale parable as adapted by Judy Fjell:
THE ANSWER
Once upon a time deep in the woods there lived a woman whose hair had long since turned gray. Because of her vast knowledge of herbs and healing, the people of the nearby village called her a “witch.” They often sought her advice when faced with the problems of everyday life. The children of the village, however, sometimes delighted in playing tricks on this woman.
One day a boy and girl thought up a new plan. They snared a small bird and carried it through the woods to the witch’s cabin. As the boy held the bird behind his back, the girl stepped up to the door. “Rap, rap, rap,” the girl knocked with great confidence, knowing that this time surely they would outsmart the old crone.
When the witch opened the door, the boy with the bird said boldly, “Old woman, what do you think I have behind my back?” The children did not think for a minute that the woman would be able to guess it was a bird, but, if she did, they planned to ask, “Is it alive or dead?” If she guessed “dead” the boy would release the live bird before her eyes. But if she guessed “alive” the boy would crush the bird in his hand and present her with a dead bird instead.
The witch, noticing a small down feather which floated to the ground behind the boy’s back said, “You have a bird in your hand.” The children’s eyes opened wide with amazement. She was smarter than they thought. The little girl, however, immediately asked, ‘But is the bird dead or alive?”
The old woman closed her eyes and thought for a moment. When she opened them, she smiled briefly at the little girl and then looked directly into the eyes of the boy who held the bird and said, “The answer is in your hands.”