The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts hosted the annual Edna Manley Lecture on Monday evening (March 3), marking the commencement of its Founders’ Week celebrations.

The lecture, titled ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: Allegory and Myth, The Artist as Change Agent‘, offered unique insights into Edna Manley’s multifaceted life as an influential artist, devoted grandmother, and wife of National Hero Norman Manley.

Rachel Manley began by recounting her grandmother’s formative years in southwest England, particularly her time in Cornwall. Following the loss of her Methodist missionary father when Edna was only nine years old, her mixed-race Jamaican mother raised nine children independently.

Rachel characterised her grandmother as possessing “fierce independence” and described her as “buoyant, optimistic, keenly sensitive, over-sentimental, witchy, high-drama, highly superstitious…impressionable, generous-hearted, poetic, canny…a shrewd interpreter of life,” and “constantly mischievous.”

She recounted that her grandmother gave her ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe‘ by CS Lewis as a child.  She said it was “a book that I still have which had a profound effect on me. I remember reading it with her and she impressed on me the importance of something I now know as allegory.” It was her way of introducing the power of symbols and allegory that so defined her own artistic expression.

The lecture chronicled significant moments in Edna’s life, including her first meeting at age 14 with her handsome older cousin from Jamaica (Norman Manley), who was en route to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, her journey to Jamaica as a young wife and mother in 1922, and her difficulties with colonial society.

Rachel highlighted the dynamic interplay between culture and politics within the Manley household and Edna’s contributions through her art and teaching at the Institute of Jamaica.

The presentation featured illuminating slides showcasing two distinct periods of Edna’s symbolic work. The first period included her famous 1935 sculpture ‘Negro Aroused‘, along with works such as ‘Prophet‘, ‘Pocomania‘, and ‘Strike‘. Rachel noted the “parallel lines as [Edna] expresses in her art what Norman reflects in politics.” The second period (1941-1947) featured ‘Horse of the Morning‘, ‘The Land‘, ‘Night‘, and ‘The Rising Sun‘, which Rachel described as “a series of magical, often majestic symbols of nature’s cycles.”

The event drew numerous distinguished attendees, including former opposition leader Peter Phillips and his wife, Sandra Minott Phillips; ex-Cabient minister Burchell Whiteman and his wife, Jolene; Joseph Matalon, chairman of the Edna Manley Foundation, and his wife, Bernadette; Lisa Harrison, current Chair of the Norman Manley Foundation; and former foundation chair Ainsley Henriques.

The annual Edna Manley Lecture is a cornerstone of Founders’ Week, which celebrates the legacy and ongoing impact of the College’s namesake through exhibitions, performances, and academic events.