A Visual Essay – Art Building Community
Compiled by By Annalee Davis
Published by: Caribbean in Transit, George Mason University, Virginia, USA (Issue No. 3)
Edited by: Marielle Barrow
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2012
How do we consider the value of visual culture within a given context and how do creatives meaningfully engage with collective space and a common audience? What is our relationship to the commons and how might the public engage with aesthetic interventions?
This visual essay responds to Caribbean InTransit’s call to contemplate the transformative potential of art in the contemporary world. The selection of works, culled from artists who work in the Caribbean or have a relationship to the region, expose a variety of contexts in which makers interface with public space and the contemporary moment while building audience through networks of communication. The suite of images reveals direct interventions into the public space, commentary on topical issues such as violence, performative actions and community-based projects. In many cases the works are temporal in nature, allowing us to observe the elasticity of practices emerging throughout the region - adjusting to the constantly shifting communities we are continually becoming. The seven artists include Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico/USA), Mark King (Barbados/USA), Ebony Patterson (Jamaica/USA), Sheena Rose (Barbados), Adele Todd (Trinidad & Tobago), Rodell Warner (Trinidad & Tobago) and Alberta Whittle (Barbados/UK).
1. Laura Anderson Barbata was born in Mexico City. She live and works in New York City and Mexico City where she is a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Escultura, Pintura y Grabado La Esmeralda of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, México. Since 1992 she has worked primarily in the social realm and has initiated projects in the Amazon of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, the USA, and Mexico.
‘GRAS is a papermaking project that started in 2001 and takes place within the local school of Grande Riviere. The school adopted papermaking into their curricula, creating the possibility for children to develop their creative skills and be involved in art through recycling. These young people were invited to lead a number of workshops in schools throughout Trinidad and successfully taught and shared their papermaking knowledge with over 200 hundred children and adults. The goal of the project was to become a self-sustaining producer of fine quality 100% natural fiber paper, recycled paper, and block prints. This project provides the people of Grande Riviere an empowering alternative for generating a means of revenue without having to leave their village in search for a job in the city, where their quality of life would be greatly diminished. GRAS is an extension of Barbata’s work that began in the Amazon of Venezuela, where she initiated a paper and bookmaking project with the Yanomami people in 1992.’
‘On November 2011 in New York, Barbata collaborated with the Brooklyn Jumbies to present Intervention: Wall Street – a performance that took place on Wall Street in New York City’s Financial District. Intervention: Wall Street was conceived as a response to the dire economic crisis that became most evident in 2008 afflicting Americans and impacted 99% of the global population. Financial speculation and banking abuses by the largest and most powerful institutions on Wall Street have brought misery to individuals, institutions and to entire countries. In this public performance which took place in November 2011, Laura Anderson Barbata and the Brooklyn Jumbies brought to the Financial District of New York a world-wide practice to remind viewers of the global impact of this crisis and the urgent need to elevate and change the values and practices of the New York Financial Industry. Anderson Barbata and the Brooklyn Jumbies towered over the Financial District in a performance that incorporated stilt dancers wearing 12ft high business suits, music and a collaborative spirit. The public was invited to join and support the intervention/dance wearing a business suit and participate in the 30 minute performance.’
2. Mark King is a Barbadian artist who has lived and worked in the US, Canada, Belgium and the Bahamas. He graduated with an MFA in Photography from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Having recently returned to live in Barbados after spending most of his adolescence and adult life off the island, King is reading the social space anew, interfacing with and documenting the street through his photographic practice. King teaches photography and art production at the EBCCI, Cave Hill campus, UWI.
‘For Call and Response, I wrote directly on a few of the 'Jesus is Coming!' signs that decorate the Barbados landscape. The intervention was a reaction to the wheat-pasted and hand painted signs I passed just about everywhere I went in Barbados. I felt compelled to add some humor to the heavy message being broadcast. Armed with a king size permanent marker I offered added instructions, which were to be read while walking on Pine Road in the Belleville district.
Step 1: Jesus is Coming!; Tuck your chain
Step 2: Jesus is Coming!; Look busy
Step 3: Jesus is Coming!; Wait here
The reaction to the images was mostly positive. I even caught wind of a few people who had seen the signs before they were taken down. With religion being such a sensitive topic in Barbados, it was interesting that most people who experienced the work in picture form or on the street actually found them cheeky. I assume those who posted the 'Jesus is Coming!' signs in the first place did not.’
3. Ebony Patterson was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1981. She graduated from the Edna Manley College with an honours diploma in painting and pursued her MFA in printmaking and drawing from the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual at Washington University in St. Louis. She has taught at the University of Virginia and is currently an Assistant Professor in Painting at the University of Kentucky.
‘During my two week residency in Port-of-Spain, sponsored by Alice Yard, I made nine coffins – one for each person that died in a little over a week during my visit there. The piece was made to recognise the lives lost during the course of this period of the visit, and to call into the urgency of a spiraling murder and crime rate in Trinidad. Coming from a similar experience in Jamaica I thought it was a worthy project, understanding the circumstances of the current climate of Trinidad. The project has taken the form of a 'bling funeral', which is strongly informed by dancehall and I dare to even say, Revivalist and Baptist cultures. In a ‘bling funeral’, loved ones who have ‘passed are truly celebrated in fine style, with shrine like coffins and 'bashment' patrons/ mourners.’ While at Alice Yard, I collaborated with the internationally recognised Rapso Group, 3 Canal for a sound portion of the project which led the procession of coffins through the streets of the Woodbrook neighbourhood.’
4. Sheena Rose is a Barbadian based artist who has recently completed residencies in Kentucky, South Africa, Trinidad and Suriname. She works with painting, animation and more recently performance art. Rose represented Barbados at the 2012 Habana Biennial and is the founder of an artist led initiative, Projects and Space (2011) which creates the possibility of coordinating art projects in public spaces throughout Barbados.
‘Sweet Gossip is a collaborative project with photographer Adrian Richards and writer Natalie McGuire. The project looks at the Pop culture of Barbados and the phrases or comments that Barbadians use when gossiping or in a certain situation. The intervention into the streets of the capital city of Bridgetown included the artist posing with her paintings like roving broadsides. The illustrated text used by the artist in the suite of paintings reflected the vernacular heard on the street. The performative actions of carrying these images into the shops on Swan Street reflected the dialect back into the public space and provided the public with a humorous reflection of itself.
Viewers, curious about these performances, interacted with those of collaborating with Rose, adding comments to the phrases they saw on the paintings. Most viewers found the project very humorous and relatable.
Sweet Gossip has developed through a number of formats and stages: first there were paintings, then live performances and public interventions, and subsequently photography.The project “Sweet Gossip” will now be showing in many different social network sites where persons gossip and comment. The internet has become the gallery space.’ (Extracted from text by Natalie McGuire)
https://vimeo.com/48307222
5. Adele Todd is a Graphic Designer, Fine Artist and Lecturer of the Visual Communications Design Associate Degree Programme at John S Donaldson Technical Institute. She holds a degree in Graphic Design from Pratt Institute. Adele’s work focuses on the intricate and intimate technique of embroidery, though is not limited to this process. She also works with silhouetted shapes, found objects and any media suited to her subject of interest, which is predominantly pulled from current headlined events in the pages of newspapers of Trinidad and Tobago.
‘Police and Tief is my response, along with the work, ‘Patrimony’, to "domestic" violence in Trinidad and Tobago as it relates to how we react and respond to each other in society. With ‘Police and Tief’, I specifically separate the pieces into four sections, police, tief, judiciary and victims. I ask that we look at ourselves, look at the way we embroider into the fabric of society certain attitudes, morals and mores. We stand observing, completely impotent, wondering what went wrong and why we cannot fix the mess we have helped create.’
6. Rodell Warner is a photographer and graphic designer working in Trinidad and Tobago. His photographs range from images of community-based environmental protection and enhancement programme workers to an exploration between public and private spaces. Filled with energy, creativity and excitement, Warner’s photographs provide a specific take on memory and experience. Often working collaboratively, Warner also creates and executes his own projects, consistently exploring and presenting new conversations about the ways we see ourselves. He has recently completed residencies in South Africa and Barbados. Common Room is a project that developed both in Trinidad and South Africa.
‘In 2009, sensing an overwhelming discomfort with making eye contact with anyone in Port of Spain, and wondering if this extended to others, I had some friends help me to get strangers to stand for a photo together, asking them to make eye contact. We did this on a busy Saturday morning on the Brian Lara Promenade. The pairs of people in the photos, who hadn't met before, were asked to participate as they passed by. The result is this photo series - a record of the range of responses to having to look at someone unfamiliar in Port of Spain.
In Johannesburg, in 2011, as part of my first major exhibition, 'Common Room', which was made of a number of works concerned with public-to-public communication, I again had help to create and record the situation in the CBD.
In Port of Spain my friends and colleagues Michelle Isava, Brianna McCarthy, Stefan Simmons, Dave Williams, and my brother Russell were the friendly faces that got the pedestrians to participate. In Johannesburg I was lucky to have the assistance of friends, the artists Donna Kukama and Ezra Wube, and the curator Portia Malatjie, especially considering the sometimes problematic language barrier.’
7. Alberta Whittle is a Barbadian artist based in Glasgow. Since graduating with an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art, Whittle has participated in residencies in Berlin, the Czech Republic, Poland and South Africa and is about to begin a ten week residency at the Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc. She choreographs interactive installations, interventions and performances as site-specific artworks in public and private spaces. Her practice is concerned with the construction of stereotypes of race, nationality and gender, considering the motivation behind the perpetuation and the different forms in which they are manifested.
“Pikswart” is an Afrikaans word that means pitch black. During a residency in Wellington in South Africa, I paint this phrase repeatedly on different surfaces in the rural landscape. Using thick blackstrap molasses that glistens in the sunlight, both disgusting and appealing, this performative gesture recalls the industry of slavery, land, forced migration and boundaries and its impact on notions of blackness. Its smell attracts insects and baboons. Referring to the colour black as a social construct referring to race as well as its painterly attributes, I hope to use the audience’s experiences and knowledge of the past to inform my work, where they can make sense of the clues from the past and the suggestion of shared histories.
Located in the Boland, a rural wine making community and witnessed by local residents and other artists, the molasses was painted on different surfaces throughout the Hawequas mountains. The etymological roots of the phrase, Pikswart, were discussed. Pikswart is from the Dutch words, Pik and Swart. Pik means both penis and pitch. Swart means black. Suggestions were made to paint the phrase on phallic structures like trees and felled tree trunks, reflecting the rape of the land by European explorers. Discussions pertaining to land, lust and territory were undertaken as well as curiosity about the significance of the molasses. The molasses can be taken as a reference to the landscape being devoured by man.’
