#sexypink/Indo Caribbean Artist | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sexypinkon · 8 months

Text

Sexypink - Medulla Art Gallery presents

West Indian dolls, a portrayal of blackness.

by WENDY NANAN

NOW SHOWING

(*There won’t be a formal opening but you can visit anytime for the duration of the exhibition)

Exhibition continues until: Friday 29th September, 2023

FREE ADMISSION - OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-2pm.

Address: #37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain.

For more information please contact:

Telephone: +1(868)680-1041, +1(868)622 -1196

Email: [email protected]

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The dolls were acquired on travels with my father throughout the Caribbean, from Caracas to Cuba, in the 1990’s. Bought in handicraft shops, made for the tourist trade, I was first intrigued by the political and social implications of how we were representing ourselves in a modern, post colonial society.

Why the use of the Aunt Jemima black face and the exotic and quaint depiction of servitude to appeal to wealthy foreigners? Why the acceptance of racist stereotypes and negative imagery, sourced from American caricatures of black people – Sambo Memorabilia?

But I also collected them because they were beautifully and intricately handmade, showing the signatures of their creators, much like fingerprints on ancient Sumerian pottery. I imagined the women making the dolls, hoping for sales, having to pander to the ingrained racist and sexist views of the buyers. More concerned with everyday survival than perpetuating these prejudices.

I recently saw a Facebook post asking for a photo-op of a coconut vendor with donkey cart. We are still painting pictures of La Belle Creole, with wooden ajoupa houses in forested clearings. In my childhood, Tourist Annie walked the streets of Port of Spain, looking very out of place. How do we see and understand ourselves, descendants of the many mixtures of colonisers, slaves and immigrants? And how have we commercialised this history and imagery into clichés to make it marketable for consumption by outside worlds? Is this the masque of our blackness as island people?

Wendy Nanan 2023

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1955, Wendy Nanan is the first Indo-Trinidadian, and among the first Caribbean women artists to have a long and sustained professional practice. She obtained her BFA at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, England in 1979. Her work is included in many public and private collections, including Trinidad and Tobago’s National Museum. In her practice, Nanan takes on core questions at the heart of historical and contemporary struggles about identity, culture and power in the region. She has produced work that is at once historically and geographically specific to the place she inhabits, and timeless, gently provocative and persistently infused with her feminist politics. While Nanan is deeply respected by peers and critics in the Caribbean, she remains an under-attended-to artist, in part due to her determined locally-situated practice, she has remained in Trinidad since completing art school in 1980, and is famously reclusive, her philosophy being that “it is more important to create the work than to seek an audience for it.”

by Dr. Andil Gosine

Image: Caribbean Madonna, 2023

Artist Bio Text: Dr. Andil Gosine

Follow @medullaartgallery on Facebook and Instagram

If you wish to subscribe to our invitation list kindly email: [email protected]

**Update: https://newsday.co.tt/2023/09/25/artist-wendy-nanan-explores-post-colonialism-identity-through-dolls/

#sexypink/Wendy Nanan #sexypink/Medulla Gallery #trinidad and tobago #shows on now #Wendy Nanan #Medulla Gallery #West Indian dolls #la belle creole #tumblr/black face #tumblr/medulla Art Gallery #tumblr/sambo memorabilia

1 note · View note

sexypinkon · 2 years

Photo

S E X Y P I N K

Guyanese British Artist | Suchitra Mattai

Image:The light we know and the dark we keep, 2022, vintage saris, fabric, and tassels, 122" x 115"

......................................................................

In her own words...

I am a multi-disciplinary artist of Indo-Caribbean descent. My experiences living in several countries and cultural contexts have greatly shaped my artistic practice. Recent and upcoming projects include a commission for the Sharjah Biennial 14, “State of the Art 2020” at Crystal Bridges Museum/the Momentary, a Denver Art Museum and the Biennial of the Americas jointly sponsored installation, a commission for the MCA’s Octopus Initiative, solo exhibitions at the Boise Art Museum of Art (2021), K Contemporary Art (2020), Unit London (2022), Hollis Taggart NYC (2022), and the Center for Visual Arts, Metropolitan State University of Denver (2018) and group exhibitions at Kavi Gupta Gallery (2021), Aicon Gallery (2021), Unit London ( 2021), Pen and Brush NYC (2019), and the San Antonio Museum of Art (2021). I received an MFA in painting and drawing and an MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania, PA. My work has been reviewed in publications and on-line platforms such as Hyperallergic, Document Journal, the Boston Globe, Widewalls, Cultured Magazine, and Wallpaper Magazine and is in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Taylor Art Collection.

Statement

I am interested in how memory allows us to unravel and re-imagine historical narratives. My primary pursuit is to give voice to people whose voices were once quieted. Using both my own family’s ocean migrations and research on the period of colonial indentured labor during the 19th Century, I seek to expand our sense of “history.” Re-writing this colonial history contributes to contemporary dialogue by making visible the struggles and perseverance of those who lived it. I often focus on women and employ practices and materials associated with the domestic sphere such as embroidery, weaving, various fiber elements, etc. I re-imagine vintage and found materials that have a rich past as a way of creating a dialogue with the original makers and the time periods in which they were cherished as well as a means of navigating my own personal narrative. I often use vintage saris as a way of connecting women of the South Asian diaspora from around the world. Thinking about colonization in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean is a way of tracing my family’s history in Guyana and India and of fostering discussion around contemporary issues surrounding gender and labor. Combining, re-contextualizing, and reconfiguring disparate materials is a way of making sense of the world around me and of reconciling multiple cultural spheres that I inhabit as an Indo-Caribbean woman.

#sexypink/Indo Caribbean Artist #sexypink/textile art #textile art #Sexypink/Suchitra Mattai Tumblr/Suchitra Mattai #Indo/Caribbean Art

3 notes · View notes