Artwork copyright Donald Fels. Photo courtesy of University of Washington.

Artwork copyright Donald Fels. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Artwork copyright Donald Fels. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Black Gold, 2003

Donald Fels
(American, born 1946)

Location: University of Washington - Tacoma, Tacoma

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Donald Fels fashioned the painting Black Gold after movie billboards in India. The billboard-painting shows Vasco da Gama – a Portuguese explorer, or an "invader" as the artwork proposes – as the movie's main character who arrives in India by sea.

Black pepper from India was so important to the late medieval European lifestyle of the 1400s that it often had a one-to-one exchange rate with gold. Pepper was often called “black gold.” The pepper trade from India was controlled by Arab merchants. King Manuel I of Portugal sent Vasco da Gama in search of a sea route to India in 1497. Da Gama’s success linked Europe to Asia by sea, connected the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and began sea-based international trade. Da Gama also returned with pepper plants that were successfully grown in Portugal.

The artwork honors Indian pop culture. It also explores the complicated history of European colonialism and questions who writes history and what is the true story. Fels tells the stories of “black gold” through a series of eight artworks at the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with University of Washington.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Visual artist and writer Donald Fels is active in the United States, Europe, and Asia. “His work explores the routes that connect people with commodities, institutions with their environments, places with the ideas that have defined them.”
Fels received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art, History and Literature from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He received a Master of Arts in Education degree from City University, Seattle.