Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, NY
August 31, 2007 – January 27, 2008

By Rea Cris

Riding the subway to the Brooklyn Museum, I gaze at an advertisement that shows an exotic woman in a bright yellow bathing suit, swimming with bright blue flippers in wondrous aquamarine waters towards the Statute of Liberty and in the distance the tip of Manhattan. The advert confides: “ The Caribbean is closer than you think”. Shamefully this travel-poster image of the tropical paradise is all I know of the Caribbean, let alone its contemporary art.

The Caribbean is a loose collection of islands, some postcolonial and other semicolonial. Due to political and economic instability, migration from island to island or abroad has created a fusion of cultures that is constantly growing and transforming. Artists struggle between whether to produce indigenous art, usually created for tourist purposes, or contemporary art for the international platform. Despite the United States’ embargo and its recent cultural past, Cuba has a thriving art scene that is not necessarily centred on its politics. Not only keeping abreast with contemporary developments in art, Cuba also adds to the global art scene by hosting its own international Bienal de la Habana. Jamaica, on the other hand, still cultivates a traditional approach, which is generally reserved for the upper classes. To add to this wide range of art practices, underground cultures such as music and their dancehalls have created their own visual imagery and movements. In the past, exhibitions of Caribbean art have featured artists who are second generation or have settled abroad, rather that addressing with the area in the present. This exhibition’s title, “Infinite Islands,” however, alludes to Columbus’ travels. When asked whether the Indies was an island or continent, the explorer replied that it was made up of infinite islands of which no one had seen the end. This exhibit, which is significantly situated in Brooklyn with its large Caribbean community, exhibits 45 emerging and established artists who work in the Caribbean, the United States, Canada and Europe. Most were born in the Caribbean, with ties to fourteen countries and territories.

Upon entering the gallery, you are greeted with Hew Locke’s “El Dorado,” a rendition of Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait done in cheap plastic toys, and seemly the mascot of the exhibitions as it dons the poster and catalogue. It’s an obvious introduction to classic symbols of colonial power; popular (and low) culture vs. royalty, mass-produced plastic vs. precious stones. The show also concludes with Locke’s “Vita, Veritas, Victoria – Life, Truth and Victory,” a replica of the royal coat of arms depicted on British passport made up of strings of black beads. Gone are the lion and unicorn, replaced by tribal faces and grimacing women sending the reminder that the colonizer is not the only one handing down influences. As a case in point, Satch Hoyt’s “Dub Ramp” comments on the West Indies’ appropriation of cricket, transforming it into a symbol of national pride, mixing it in with Jamaican Dub music often heard at cricket grounds. Ewan Atkinson’s critique on a children’s textbook of British “high” morals demonstrates the ridiculous expectations of indoctrination as he literally tries to fit into a school girl dress and sits slightly bemused in a floral wallpapered doll house. Terry Boddie takes a more sombre approach to colonization and more specifically slavery: “Star and Stripes” represents an American flag, composed of slave imagery - the stars are slaves, the stripes whips. “Blue Print” superimposes drawing of slaves packed as cargo into ships and contemporary urban housing, questioning whether we treat each other any differently, even now.

Addressing the issue in its modern incarnation, Ann Lee Davis criticizes the popularity of resort tourism, which detracts from improvements and opportunities for the local inhabitants. Her installation, “Just Beyond My Imagination,” represents a golf course with sand traps in the shape of Caribbean islands and a flag signalling “Members Preferred”. Steve Ouditt’s “Excerpts from the Propagandist’s Diary of L. Padre Grande” (created specifically for the exhibition) mockingly tells the tale of an imaginary Caribbean dictator plagued by corruption and greed. Exaggerating stereotypes and inserting some humour, Ouditt’s cartoon-esque style has the dictator claiming he “controls oil, save coconut oil, my only weakness” and citizens escaping to the ‘subcowtinent’ – shaped as a fertile and abundant cow.

Joscelyn Gardner’s lithographs of traditional African braided hairstyles merged with torture implements, stresses the hidden faces of black women throughout history, while Ebony Grace Patterson ridicules the stereotype of the exotic black female representing her as a headless obese entity rising triumphantly from the depths. Jorge Pineda’s “Nimas Locas (Mad Little Girls)” in their underwear, Mexican wrestling tempt the dark side brought on my instability and poverty.
Caribbean artists celebrate their proud tradition of music and the subculture it has generated. Convinced by the artist, Melvin Moti, Jamaican Ska dancer Miss Daisy, now aged 72, improvises a dance outside her home. The silent video, “Top Legs,” is a mixture between ‘contemporary’ and tribal dance. Storm Sawlter explains, “in a place where people cannot afford to create their identity through consumerism and conspicuous consumption, they must create their identity from the inside out” (page 210). “Inna di Dance (in the dance)” shows men dancing at a dancehall, like competing mates, they circle around each other, trying to outshine and impress with their personalized signature dance moves.

Curator Tumelo Mosaka concludes that “ rather than split the islands, their art should be loosely united into one entity, that describes and covers the wide range of emotions, problems and feeling felt by its people. The work is a site where transformation is made possible. Works do not present a singular coherent identity but rather exist in manifold realities distributed through diverse spaces” (page 19).

[Direct quotes taken from exhibition catalogue: “Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art”, edited by T. Mosaka, Brooklyn Museum in association with Philip Wilson Publishers, 2007]

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