Painting
date: label: Collection Date
content: 1975 to 1976
name: label: Collector
content: Carole Yawney
label: Donor Name
content: Jake Homiak
notes: label: Notes
content: Donor notes: Painting in oil. Canvas on stretched frame. Supply title provided by Jake Homiak: "Abortion". Artist: Ras Mortimo Planno (aka Brother Kumi)
label: Notes
content: Supply title provided by Jake Homiak: "Abortion", Painting by Ras Mortimo Planno, (aka Brother Kumi), (Kingston, Jamaica c. 1975), famous as the spiritual mentor to Bob Marley. Oil on canvas board approximately 12 x 20 inches. On the left side of the painting stands an assembly of African leaders next to a black African protestor under the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia [postcolonial country name Zimbabwe] being hanged on a scaffold. On the lower right side are three European leaders looking on. On the upper right side, an abortion is being performed in a hospital operating room. The first two representations stand for the white supremacist challenge that the Ian Smith regime represented for the newly formed Organization of African Unity. The representation of an abortion reflected the Rastafari community's opposition to a birth control program that had been proposed in the early 1970s in Jamaica by the World Health Organization. The Rastafari consider birth control as a form of 'abortion' and see it as strategy promoted by the dominant white world to reduce the numbers of and control peoples of African descent. Planno juxtaposed all of these themes to illustrate the challenges faced by the Rastafari and other Pan-African organizations even as decolonization was taking place on the African continent. Painting was a gift by Planno to anthropologist Carole Yawney. See also the Papers of Carole D. Yawney, National Anthropological Archives.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 14 Mar 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Kingston, Jamaica, Caribbean
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Jamaican
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2073991
label: USNM Number
content: E434378-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Painting
physicalDescription: label: Length
content: 85 cm
label: Width
content: 51 cm
label: Height
content: 2 cm