Bahamian artist Holly Parotti – whose work was recently exhibited at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas in the seventh national exhibition, Antillean: an Ecology – will soon be featured internationally at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Brooklyn, New York. One of seven artists from the Caribbean and its diasporas, Parotti will debut new photographic works in the exhibition that highlights “elements innate to art practices, including note-taking, observation, discovery and transformation”. Titled Field Notes: Extracts, the group show is curated by Holly Bynoe and debuts on June 18.
A decidedly subjective and personal show, in Field Notes, artists Deborah Anzinger, Gilles Elie-dit-Cosaque, Jasmine Thomas Girvan, Vashti Harrison, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Joiri Minaya and Holly Parotti will each present a visual narrative responding to her or his socio-political and gendered experiences. Each artist will construct a narrative about these experiences and examine them in the context of a colonized past.
Parotti’s photos focus heavily on the symbolism and significance of silk cotton trees – a majestic, protected and oft-overlooked part our landscape. Her digital works underscore the protective elements found in the grandiose trees’, whose branches have proffered shelter from the rain and shade for socializing for centuries. Colonial legacy, tradition and folklore are contemplated through her works.
At the exhibition, guests can expect works by Jamaican artist Deborah Anzinger in a body of works titled “My Mind Clears When I See the Glimmer in Your Right Eye”. Featuring paintings and installations with mirrors and living components, Anzinger acknowledges unknown and transformational experiences; her work discusses the individual experience that results from perception and actual presence.
U.S.-based, Dominican artist Joiri Minaya will examine otherness, post-colonialism and feminine consciousness. Minaya has developed a body of work that uses popular tropical patterns to speak of the commodification and domestication of nature, and the insertion of American imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Parisbased artist Gilles Elie-Dit-Cosaque presents a series of 16 digital works that weave together personal and collective realities in splayed pages, paying testament to Creole memory and the legacy of luminary, Edouard Glissant.
U.S.-born filmmaker Vashti Harrison shares an experimental portrait of the ghosts embedded in the culture of Trinidad and Tobago. Her film is structured as a visual and aural field guide to the ghosts, spirits and zombies throughout the island. The film focuses on the places where the natural and supernatural collide.
Guadeloupean artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s work deals with the story of the Indian diaspora in the French West Indies. Inspired by Aimé Césaire’s seminal poetic work “Notebook of Return to the Native Land”, Mary addresses processes of identity construction within post-colonial domination.
Probing the fraught emotional terrain of sorrow, Jamaican-born, Trinidad-based metalsmith and jeweler Jasmine Thomas Girvan will present “Of Flesh and Ether”, a lamentation on loss and metamorphosis. Her collection of works explores the phenomenon of absence, particularly in relation to death, regeneration and the cycles of life. Visitors can expect to find elements of magical realism embracing the spirit of pilgrimage.
Visual elements will be complemented and will complement in return literary works from the region, which are meant to be explored in the show’s context; pieces by influential writers like James Baldwin, Edouard Glissant and Jean Rhys will be featured.
Field Notes: Extracts will be on display at MoCADA from June 18 to September 27.
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