Black Diaspora Visual art
National Art Gallery committee- National Cultural Foundation of Barbados – International curators forum – Arts Council of England – Aica Caraïbe du sud
The symposium of February 13th and 14th 2009 which took place at the Frank Collymore Hall in Bridgetown, Barbados, included debates, film presentations and exhibitions.
The points debated by the panellists centred on the following questions:
- Is there a Caribbean canon?
- Can we discuss a Caribbean aesthetic in the 21st century?
- What are the institutional models?
- How do we identify the different ways forward?
David A. Bailey, MBE, Curator for this major artistic event, is one of those who have made this project come to life. In his introduction of the different speakers, as well as during the different panels he has been constantly attentive to precision and coherence during the debates. The same goes for the material organisation of the seminar during these two days.
Among the personalities in charge of the welcome address were Alissandra Cummins, Chairperson National Art Gallery committee, Director of Barbados Museum, Jeannine Comma, Steve Blackett, Minister of Community development and culture and David A. Bailey, International Curator’s Forum. Panel One centred on the discussion of Stuart Hall’s and George Lamming’s response. Also present were David Scott, and Alissandra Cummins.
Stuart Hall, Cultural Theorist, Professor Emeritus, Open University, London, insists on the different generations which have shaped Caribbean art today in his dialogue with David A. Bailey based on Hall’s article Black Diaspora Artists in Britain: Three ‘Moments’ in Post-war History’. David Bailey was a moderator for this panel.
Part of his analysis centres on the new generation of black artists in Britain and their works based on the body – body politics- which was not dissociated from sexuality: ‘on the side of the body racial discourse had long undertaken the work of systematically reducing history to biology, culture to nature’. This is illustrated in Keith Piper’s work in which the male body is used both to define identity and to denounce racial prejudice.
The new young artists include David Bailey, Sonia Boyce, Keith Piper and Eddie Chambers, although writers and intellectuals such as Sam Selvon, Andrew Salkey, Roger Mais, and George Lamming have contributed to an awareness of Caribbean assertiveness in a reluctant post-war Britain.
George Lamming revisits the past generations of artists who have paved the way for the new movements, including the Black Artists movement. He underlines the activity and vibrancy of the new generation, and makes us understand better the developments in visual arts since the arrival in Great-Britain of the Caribbean immigrants in the fifties, and the not-so-easy integration in this new world. Focusing on attitudes at that time from people who used to stammer before pronouncing the word ‘Black’, he causes some smiles in the audience. Lamming does not forget to stress the importance of the female artists in contemporary art bringing to attention the fact that women artists were not so many one generation ago.
Krista Thompson, from Northwestern Univerisity of Illinois based her analysis on the Proms so as to explore representation, experiencing being a subject. The young couples shown parading in their prom suits and dresses are part of the ‘bling’ culture, the starting point being the Jonkonnu performance. Use of tricks and lights, being photographed like celebrities in a sort of happening. Such practises as local practises of visibility refer largely to the characters from the Trinidadian Carnival
The second panel debated about the question of Caribbean aesthetics in the 21st century. Allison Thompson, from the National gallery Committee, was the moderator for this panel. Leon Wainwright who specializes on migration, global networks of cultural transmission – in particular, shared, transatlantic histories- entitles his presentation ‘Art and Generation in the Transatlantic Caribbean’
Veerle Poupeye from Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica revisited the debate and polemics that opposed the Jamaican public, specifically concerning the setting up of a collection for the Jamaican National Gallery.
This constitutes another major aspect of the symposium, along with the other subjects which brought to our attention the reality of artistic practices. Some reviews through the Caribbean help the public to discuss and identify these practices: Small Axe, a Caribbean journal of criticism focuses on the renewal of the practices of intellectual criticism in the Caribbean. The Caribbean Review of Books based in Trinidad, in which editor Nicholas Laughlin focuses on what is written in the region, poetry, criticism, books, or notebooks. Christopher Cozier is a contributor to the review and in his presentation to the symposium relates his experience with CCA7 and the Galvanize project so far, showing his involvement in the artistic developments of the region. One of his future projects features a video associating soundtrack and visuals with the participation of motorists in a public space.
Video works also included Kara Walker’s use of paper silhouettes and characters animated with strings, and pictures giving an impression of old films, all this to illustrate slavery, violence, rapes and drowning. As the pictures become more colourful, the spectator is made to relive testimonies of violent incidents involving the death of black people and the extreme brutality of a white gang. Kara Walker’s answer to the question concerning the function of her work as far as people are concerned is “Video work goes just like story telling, a narration that comes in the form of testimony, about atrocities that were committed”.
Through her characters and the strings appearing in the picture she wants to convey the idea of suffering, of chains, of people dragging weights. In King Cotton the artist expresses the need to turn the tables, see reality in another way. Kara Walker was interviewed by Teka Selman.
Video work appears as one major practice in Caribbean art in the 21st century as we discover Sheena Rose’s Town –Video animation, 2009. Equally attractive was Ewan Atkinson’s Starman in flight, 2009, - with Ingrid Persaud’s collaboration- as the public was invited to try on the Starman outfit. The three screen video installation including a soundtrack and retracing Barbados’s history, by Gary Stewart and Trevor Mathison, though different in tone helped everyone remembering - or commemorating - a past that has shaped us all. Commemoration also concerns the sculptures of famous cricket players and personalities by Arthur Edwards and Frances Ross.
In the Parliament building Ingrid Pollard evokes her family’s exile in a video Belonging to Britain.
Joscelyn Gardner in her video installation in public space ‘Words… Just Words’ projected on the entrance of the former Public Library in Bridgetown, questions the weight of words in a colonial world. She suggests purifying the site symbolically, - with waves washing continually the door- . The artists realises a collision between two texts written differently at different periods, one from Richard Ligon, 1657, and another from NourbeSe Phillips.
The third panel included past experiences, institutions and perspectives. Lowery Sims, from the Museum of Arts and Design, New York and Richard Powell from Duke University, North Carolina, as moderator who agreed with Dominique Brebion that ‘change through exchange’ was exactly what that symposium was about.
Dominique Brebion’s paper entitled Martinique, A Cultural Structure inspired from the French Model insists on the specific situation of the French Overseas Regions that represent a minority within a fragmented Caribbean region, either geographically, politically, economically, or culturally. The differences that prevail for the shaping of an African-Caribbean English-speaking and French-speaking Diaspora, and the consequences on the art world were also evoked. Dominique Brebion revisits the visual arts history in Martinique after 1945, as related to the concepts of Négritude, Créolité and Créolisation.
It was almost automatic to see a possible connection between Dominique Brebion and Erica James, Director of the National Gallery in Bahamas, as both have focussed on the institutions that make art possible in their region. Besides, Erica James’s description as well as the visual on the headless statue of Prince Alfred will remind to a martinican observer our beheaded statue of Josephine de Beauharnais, another common aspect in the history of our regions. Political activism and responsibility as citizens seems to remain present in art today. Caroline Holder includes in her work the paranoid attitudes that have developed after 911. Her installation Homeland Insecurity, 2006 reflects the feeling of suspicion and looming hostility of this century. Female artists have had a significant representation during this symposium, and Indrani Gall’s huge installation on the General Post Office building attracted a fair number of participants. Artists such as Gail Pounder-Speede, Alberta Whittle and Aurelia Walcott, express through the use of various media both feminism and identity.
Paul Domela, Programme Director – Liverpool Biennial insisted on the roles of international exhibitions to attract critical attention, as well as the need for Liverpool, a former starting point for the slave trade, to become more lively. The role of artistic events is also evoked by Andrea Wells, National cultural Foundation of Barbados, who makes a critical analysis of Carifesta, a statement that encourages the organisation of such events despite growing difficulties.
The symposium also hosted the exhibition The Road to Many: Towards a Genealogy of Barbadian Art. In her introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition, Therese Hadchity, the Curator, points out that the exhibition was arranged to coincide with the 2009 Black Diaspora Visual Arts Symposium. The exhibition illustrates the essay by Stuart Hall Modernity and its Others: Three Moments in the Post-War History of the Black Diaspora Arts.
The first wave of the Three Moments consisted of artists born in the British colonies during the 1920es and 30es and immigrated to Britain in the 1950es and 1960es. The second wave of artists born in the Diaspora between the 1950es and the 1960s, made the choice of direct action in response to the context of racism and marginalization when they started to work and exhibit one or two decades later.
The still developing third wave seems to practise an art that Hall describes as ‘more engaged’ while acknowledging the influence of globalization
Alfredo Jaar presented to the audience some of his most recent videos of public interventions inspired from the context, and significantly committed. Among these creations realised all over the world, The Cloud, 2000, San Diego, at the Mexican-US border, A Logo For America, 1987, in New York, One million Finnish Passports, 1995, Finland, Lights in The City, 2005, Canada, The Shoghall Kansthall, 2000, in Sweden, The Rwanda Project, 1994-2000.
SUZANNE LAMPLA
Contact: aica-sc@orange.fr
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