Works by T&T artists are featured in two regional shows in Jamaica and the Bahamas, respectively.
One of the shows is called Digital, and is up at the National Gallery of Jamaica until July 4.
“Digital, as the title suggests, is an exhibition of digital art, including video, animation, short films, GIFs, digital illustrations, photography, and social and interactive media, and was curated by Veerle Poupeye, O’Neil Lawrence, and Monique Barnett-Davidson,” artist Richard Mark Rawlins wrote in an email to the Sunday Arts Section after the April 24 opening of the show.
“The exhibition is based on a call for submissions, which was, for the first time in the National Gallery’s history, extended to the wider Caribbean and its diaspora. Of the 73 submissions received, 39 were selected for the exhibition, which features artists who are based in or from Jamaica, Barbados, Puerto Rico, T&T, Belize, Suriname, Bermuda, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Martin, the USA, Canada, France, England, Germany and China.”
Along with Rawlins, T&T artists in the show include Rodell Warner, Arnaldo James, Horacio Hospedales and Patricia Mohammed.
“Most of the works in Digital engage actively with the political implications of images and image-making and the exhibition invites reflection about the rapidly changing dynamics of technology, culture, society and visuality since the ‘digital revolution,’ globally and in the Caribbean context,” Rawlins wrote.
Rawlins’ piece, So You Think You Could Dance, is a short video that “examines ‘coonery and bufoonery’ as presented in a select choice of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s television shows featuring largely all black casts.
“Despite the difference in storylines, as well as casts, one main ‘staple’ of black television is ‘dance’. Dance as presented not for merit of skill, but rather dance as presented for laughs. Once the dance segment comes on the background track is not one of adulation, cheering or ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs,’ but rather the famous laugh track.
“Presented here for contemplation is a video that is pieced together from edited YouTube segments of the Cosby Show, That’s My Momma, Good Times, Family Matters, Diff’rent Strokes, Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons, all sandwiched between an opening and closing clip from the Al Jolson Movie showing a white actor in black face singing ‘negro’ music. The video attempts to question among other things the ways blacks were presented on television and the undesirable legacy of the dancing coon.”
He adds, “The piece is part of a larger body that I’ve been working on called THE FINDING BLACK FILM FESTIVAL.”
Over in the Bahamas, on April 28 their National Art Gallery (NAGB) opened a show that includes POSITIONS + POWER by Marlon Griffith, which debuted in T&T two years ago.
“Travelling to the Bahamas from New Orleans and the Cayman Islands, En Mas’: Carnival, Junkanoo and Performance Art of the Caribbean explores the influence that street festivals like Junkanoo can have on the visual arts. En Mas’ features nine artists from across the region and internationally,” said the gallery in a publicity note.
“The exhibition is particularly appropriate in the Bahamas, where the division between visual artists and Junkanoo has become blurred by the partnerships forged by artists like John Beadle; Stan Burnside and his late brother, Jackson; and the late Brent Malone, among many others. The NAGB hopes that visitors will engage in discussion on the historic and social significance of ‘mas’, which has inherited elements of traditional African festivals, Christian celebrations and European masquerade parties.”
Exhibition curators Krista Thompson and Claire Tancons said Griffith, “a Japan-based, Trinidad born, mas’-trained artist, conceived POSITIONS + POWER during the Carnival season as a contemporary mas band attuned to the social and political undercurrents of T&T.
“Using the body as its primary medium,” the text continues, “POSITIONS + POWER stripped mas’ of its decorative elements while maintaining a balance between the material and the immaterial. Through interactions between the masqueraders and an ominous mobile surveillance tower reminiscent of the police booths that are omnipresent at Carnival time, POSITIONS + POWER sought to illuminate power relations in public space. Through visual clues, Griffith linked colonial and contemporary modes of surveillance while testing the boundaries of contemporary art-making and mas-making.
“For this exhibition, Griffith brings together video documentation of the performance with photographic interpretations by Trinidad-based Jamaican photographer Marlon James. Griffith also includes original and refabricated physical elements from the performance, such as the costumes and helmets of the OVERSEER and his watch dog, DOBERMAN—takes on the Trinidad Carnival tradition of ‘individuals’ or special characters—and a scaled-down version of the tower in which they periodically stood or sat during the performance. The resulting display is as immersive as it is partial, materialiSing the experiential gaps that only performance can fill.”
En Mas’ will remain up until July 10.