The Work of Jasmine Thomas-Girvan seen through the lens of Magical Realism (original) (raw)
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ALH Online Review, 2020
In Working Juju, Andrea Shaw Nevins offers a multidisciplinary and multimedia analysis of works of cultural production that, in some way, manifest a concern with the broad notion of "the fantastic" in the Caribbean. Remaining faithful to the polysemy of the term Juju, as it relates to forms of religious beliefs and practices of magic across continents and in different times of history, Shaw Nevins's approach to the fantastic encompasses a wide variety of genres such as novels, songs, films, history books, and journalistic writing. Yet it limits its scope to works in English and is trained mostly on cultural productions having to do with Jamaica and Haiti. Even though this linguistic and geographical constraint could narrow too much the scope of an investigation that promises to be about the "Caribbean fantastic," the wide variety of media considered as objects of the analysis actually broadens this focus to give us an impressive range of practices, voices, approaches, and textures to consider. This interdisciplinary consideration of the fantastic is doubtless one of the strengths of the book; plus, the author's methodology suggests that the investigative work could lead to many other places and languages. How would this project look like in a multilingual, geographically extensive form? Is it possible to conceive of a "Caribbean fantastic," taking the region as a unity of analysis, even if complex and multifocal?
A Caribbean Hauntology: The Sensorial Art of Joscelyn Gardner And M. Nourbese Philip
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2018
This article explores the tension between the senses and the immaterial in Barbadian artist’s Joscelyn Gardner’s multimedia installation White Skin, Black Kin: A Creole Conversation Piece (2003), and Omi Ebora (2014) and in the poem Zong! by Trinidadian poet M. NourbeSe Philip (2014). By the immaterial I refer to the traces in contemporary art of the slavery trade and plantation culture. I analyze three aspects: how sensorial art functions, what is the spectral in sensorial art, and what does the specter (based on Derrida’s hauntology) do for the Caribbean in the present. I suggest that the spectral in Caribbean art functions as an injunction to deal with our inherited identities, which I defined elsewhere as membership beyond consent, in such a way that we can still live with moral freedom, defined perhaps as our right and our obligation to act differently. This is what the ghostly does for both Derrida and Gardner: in the intersection between past and present narratives, there is a responsibility; the ghostly is about the obligation to choose from one's inheritance.
Introduction: Art as Caribbean Feminist Practice
Small Axe
This special section focuses on the works of women whose artistic practices are grounded in a feminist ethos and engage multiple and nuanced meanings of the Caribbean and its diaspora across linguistic, geographic, material, and formal boundaries. Through diverse written and visual contributions, it presents the Caribbean as a critical space that recognizes an existing foundation yet facilitates and expands conversations between artists and writers who have shaped and are shaping local and global art discourses using intertextual formal art practices. The section contributes to the recent flourishing of critical writing, art exhibitions, conferences, colloquia, informal and formal artist-led initiatives, and online platforms that are being deployed across the Caribbean as exhibition venue, critical interface, and medium. It conceives of the Caribbean as a space created within and through local and global formations. It may seem retardataire to not only devote an entire section to the art of Caribbean women but also think through the concepts of feminism and art in relation to this work. 1 Is feminism an applicable lens? And if so, surely feminist art practices and histories have done their work. Surely 1 Feminist art and art histories in an American context moved through several successive waves in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Here we can think about the work of Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, and Adrian Piper. Today feminism has waned as a critical approach bounded to the specificities of a movement as the work of women artists challenges dominant narratives of the art canon and attempts to make a place at the center of the contemporary art world. However, this does not mean that artists have ceased to assert a feminist platform for their work. Kara Walker's monumental sugar sculpture, A Subtlety, was a powerful example of that in 2014. In the Caribbean, many women artists, particularly Cuban artists coming of age in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, rejected what many see as a Western logocentrism in the feminist label but understood the ways the work might speak to an ethos of gender equality/gender justice.
Bagasse: Caribbean Art and the Debris of the Sugar Plantation
2015
The recent emergence of bagasse-the fibrous mass left after sugarcane is crushed-as an important source of biofuel may seem to those who have experienced the realities of plantation life like the ultimate cosmic irony. Its newly assessed value-one producer of bagasse pellets argues that "symbol of what once was waste, now could be farming gold" (" Harvesting" 2014)-promises to increase sugar producers' profits while pushing into deeper oblivion the plight of the workers worldwide who continue to produce sugar cane in deplorable conditions and ruined environments. Its newly acquired status as a "renewable" and carbon-neutral source of energy also obscures the damage that cane production continues to inflict on the land and the workers that produce it. The concomitant deforestation, soil erosion and use of poisonous chemical fertilizers and pesticides on land and water continue to degrade the environment of those fated to live and work amid its waste. It obscures, moreover, the role of sugarcane cultivation as the most salient form of power and environmental violence through which empires manifested their hegemony over colonized territories throughout the Caribbean and beyond. 1 In the discussion that follows, I explore the legacy of the environmental violence of the sugar plantation through the analysis of the work of a group of contemporary Caribbean artists whose focus is the ruins and debris of the plantation and who often use bagasse as either artistic material or symbol of colonial ruination. I argue-through the analysis of recent work by Atelier Morales (Cuba), Hervé Beuze (Martinique), María Magdalena Campos-Pons (Cuba), and Charles Campbell (Jamaica)-that artistic representation in the Caribbean addresses the landscape of the plantation as inseparable from the history of colonialism and empire in the region. Embedded in these representations of the ruins and debris of the sugar plantation "landscape" are a number of colonial and neocolonial relationships to the environment that engage central themes in artistic and literary production in the region: land tenure, diaspora, slavery and indentured servitude, family networks, community, and modernity, among others. In their multifaceted representations through photographs, paintings and installations, these artists insist on the eloquent capacity of the engagement with ruins and debris-chief among this debris, bagasse-to address the continuing impact of colonial
Theories of Art : It's Application to Caribbean Art Forms
There are three main aspects this Paper will be focusing on: First, I am going to assess the problems involved in defining art. Secondl, I will focus my attention on the theories of art, which is mainly three: the mimetic/imitation theory of art, representation theory of art and theory of art as expression. Lastly, I will look at the application of these theories of art as it relates to art in the Caribbean, those of which are; the Pan- Music and Reggae music- Particularly the musical composition of Bob Marley Redemption song and the kumina dance.
The Reality of Casas Grandes Potters: Realistic Portraits of Spirits and Shamans
Religions, 2021
Most Native American groups believed in a form of animism in which spirit essence(s) infused forces of nature (e.g., the wind and thunder), many living plants and creatures, and many inanimate objects. This animism created other-than-human persons in which spirits were fused with matter that allowed them to interact with and even influence humans. Art in Western culture tends to denote "imagination", and many scholars studying Native American art bring a similar perspective to their analyses. However, many Native Americans do not equate art with imagination in the same way, but instead use art to realistically portray these other-than-human persons, even when they are not typically visible in the natural world (e.g., the Southwestern horned-plumed serpent). Here, we apply a cognitive framework to evaluate the interplay of spirits at various levels that were created as Casas Grandes artisans used art as a means of depicting the inherent structure of the Casas Grandes spirit world. In doing so, they created links between ceremonially important objects such as pots and spirits that transformed these objects into newly created animated beings. The art thus simultaneously reflected the structure of the unseen world while also helping to determine the characteristics of these newly created other-than-human persons. One technique commonly used was to decorate objects with literal depictions of spirit beings (e.g., horned-plumed serpents) that would produce a natural affinity among the ceremonial objects and the spirit creatures. This affinity in turn allowed the animated ceremonial objects to mediate the interaction between humans and spirits. This approach transcends a view in which Casas Grandes art is considered symbolically significant and instead emphasizes the art as a component that literally helped create other-than-human collaborators that aided Casas Grandes people as they navigate ontologically significant relationships.