Homer’s Iliad begins with a promise of anger, of Achilles’ wrath that would bring about the ruin of Troy. “Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades,” goes the epic. “Many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures.”
It’s a story driven by men’s pride, cloaked as heroism, yet leading only to bloodshed and tragedy. Or, as artist Michael “Birdcap” Roy puts it, “All these men were doing all these sort of idiotic things under the guise to be heroic.”
But Birdcap doesn’t say this to belittle these characters, but instead to remark on their humanity that might go unnoticed under the prestige of classical literature. “I just found something very like comforting or familiar in these men,” he says. “It reminded me of just growing up in the deep South and what it means to be a man in Mississippi and how sometimes cleverness and wit are almost looked down upon. Like, your ability to be stoic within pain is more exceptional than your ability to avoid pain. So you stay during a hurricane or you work a hard job. … Those characters reminded me of my family and me.”
Birdcap’s current show at Crosstown Arts plays with this idea. Titled “Iliumpta,” the exhibition is a retelling of Homer’s poem, set in the southernmost bayous of Mississippi in the fictitious county of Iliumpta. “It’s based on the word Ilium, which is the Latinized version of Troy, and umpta is sort of like a false noise to make it sound like a Mississippi county,” Birdcap says. “I thought it was a good way to have an introspective show that talked about myself but using this sort of universal reference.”
He writes in his artist statement, “The men in these works shout from a nihilistic void, and in their attempts to be heroic, they, like the ancients before them, choose death over happiness, a closed ear before sound advice, and doom before an apology.”
This is Birdcap’s first solo show in Memphis. While he is known for his large-scale murals seen throughout the city and around the world, Birdcap says, “This is my first chance to have like a big sort of homecoming show.”
It’s also been an opportunity for the painter to experiment with different media like mosaic, sculpture, and silk screen. “I think you have to keep you have to keep the learning process in your routine or you get bored.”
Last year, he attended a mural festival in Pompeii, where he was fascinated by the ancient city’s mosaics. “I was blown away by just how anti-ephemeral the work is, how long it lasts.” Plus, it doesn’t hurt that mosaics have a built-in aesthetic of antiquity to go along with the Greco-Roman mythology at the core of the show. Yet, in true Birdcap style, his mosaics are “ridiculously cartoony” — as are the other pieces in the show.
“I like cartoons because when I was young, I would try to make dramatic work about my feelings or politics or whatever, but I would visualize it in this dramatic way,” he says. “And I think it had the opposite effect where people didn’t really want to pay attention to it. But I think cartoons are very safe and we all have this child-like relationship with it, and so it allows you to put these complicated or harder messages in but still be listened to. Like, it’s not baroque. It really is subtle.”
His piece, Too Much to Bear: The Suicide of Ajax, he points out, deals with male fragility quite darkly, yet because it is presented with saturated colors and is an inflatable, reminiscent of holiday decorations or childhood birthday parties, it takes on a sort of softness. But Birdcap says, “My character is Ajax, who basically got drunk with rage and really embarrassed himself, and the next day, unable to deal with this shame, he committed suicide. And so that piece could be a fairly heavy piece. Suicide, it’s not fun.”
On a similar note, Birdcap later adds, “I’ve been pretty transparent about my own mental health over the last few years, and this work is an extension of that. The paintings are about the South and the Southern man, but in no way am I trying to divide myself from the Southern man. I am imperatively a Southern man. So all the faults displayed in the paintings, I see in myself.”
But he says, “I think there’s magic here, and I think there’s like room for mythology and folktales in a way that maybe other regions don’t have. I think we have a unique relationship to the power of myth, and so it’s not a big jump for me to think these make sense together. … I’m 36 now; I’m old enough to know I can’t be from anywhere else. I think there was a time when I was young, where I was like, if I try, I can be from somewhere else. And it’s like, no, your memories are there and they’re a part of you, they’re a part of your myth.”
Birdcap’s “Iliumpta” is on display at Crosstown Arts through April 28th.
