ARTiculating Caribbean Imaginaries:
Four Caribbean Artists
Christopher Cozier
Mario Marzan
Fausto Ortiz
Gelsy Verna
Curated by Michaeline Crichlow
October 21 – December 3, 2010
Franklin Humanities Institute Gallery
C104, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse
Duke University
Opening Reception: Thursday October 21, 4:30 PM
Dialogue With Exhibition Artist Fausto Ortiz: Friday October 22, 3:30 PM
Curator Statement:
The Caribbean artists here articulate a visual poetics about their places in the world, and the world in their spaces. They engage in a visual reading of their experiences of place from various locations, within the region and without. The work of artists, Gelsy Verna, Haitian-Canadian, who 2 years ago, left us prematurely, Trinidadian, Christopher Cozier, Puerto Rican, Mario Marzan and Fausto Ortiz of La Republica Dominicana engage particular tropes common to the region’s socio-cultural practices, its imaginations and its dire ecological and geo-political contexts . These heterogeneous expressions share a common sensibility which is expressed, or so it seems, as a prominent statement about liminal movements- a dwelling in movement- and shape-shifting identities that disclose agonistic existences with things as they are, or have become in an era of entanglement and vulnerability. Caribbean homes are vulnerable spaces. Homes may offer comfort, but in the face of the region’s terrors- hurricanes, earthquakes, natural or sociopolitical disasters, (sometimes occurring simultaneously) and domestic violences-they offer no such guarantees of place. If the Caribbean is a ‘location of unending journeys,’ as Cozier suggests, then these articulations map the routes of the region’s paradoxical imaginaries. They provide a way to locate something that seems always elusive and incoherent. Like creolization itself these imaginaries lend expression to a Caribbeanness in motion, in tension and often in violent articulations.
Curator Michaeline Crichlow is Associate Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
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This is the first show in a year-long exhibition series at the FHI focusing on contemporary African American, Caribbean, and Diaspora Arts. Please visit our website for a complete schedule.
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* Image: Gelsy Verna, Mississippi Goddamn, c. 1996, Mixed Media on Paper
Four Caribbean Artists
Christopher Cozier
Mario Marzan
Fausto Ortiz
Gelsy Verna
Curated by Michaeline Crichlow
October 21 – December 3, 2010
Franklin Humanities Institute Gallery
C104, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse
Duke University
Opening Reception: Thursday October 21, 4:30 PM
Dialogue With Exhibition Artist Fausto Ortiz: Friday October 22, 3:30 PM
Curator Statement:
The Caribbean artists here articulate a visual poetics about their places in the world, and the world in their spaces. They engage in a visual reading of their experiences of place from various locations, within the region and without. The work of artists, Gelsy Verna, Haitian-Canadian, who 2 years ago, left us prematurely, Trinidadian, Christopher Cozier, Puerto Rican, Mario Marzan and Fausto Ortiz of La Republica Dominicana engage particular tropes common to the region’s socio-cultural practices, its imaginations and its dire ecological and geo-political contexts . These heterogeneous expressions share a common sensibility which is expressed, or so it seems, as a prominent statement about liminal movements- a dwelling in movement- and shape-shifting identities that disclose agonistic existences with things as they are, or have become in an era of entanglement and vulnerability. Caribbean homes are vulnerable spaces. Homes may offer comfort, but in the face of the region’s terrors- hurricanes, earthquakes, natural or sociopolitical disasters, (sometimes occurring simultaneously) and domestic violences-they offer no such guarantees of place. If the Caribbean is a ‘location of unending journeys,’ as Cozier suggests, then these articulations map the routes of the region’s paradoxical imaginaries. They provide a way to locate something that seems always elusive and incoherent. Like creolization itself these imaginaries lend expression to a Caribbeanness in motion, in tension and often in violent articulations.
Curator Michaeline Crichlow is Associate Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
---
This is the first show in a year-long exhibition series at the FHI focusing on contemporary African American, Caribbean, and Diaspora Arts. Please visit our website for a complete schedule.
---
* Image: Gelsy Verna, Mississippi Goddamn, c. 1996, Mixed Media on Paper
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