INTRODUCING: Christina Leslie’s Portraits

Christina Leslie, The Video Hoe Vixen

Curated art site, Wondereur’s most recently selected artist to watch is Christina Leslie. Leslie creates using photography and African and Jamaican art collector/ curator Kenneth Montague describes her work as having ‘a deep poignant message around multiculturalism’ with ‘a terrible beauty’. Leslie has connections to Jamaica but lives and works in Canada. A selection from her series of recent double portraits can now be viewed. Each work uses two versions of the same person placed next to each other. The automatic impulse is to search for the relationship between the images or to compare them. In one of the double portraits, the close-up frontal photograph of a young black woman’s face is placed beside another photograph of the same woman in  blackface and a blond wig. The work’s title, The Video Hoe Vixen is what readily reveals how each image informs the other.

Christina Leslie, Calcutta Curry Boy

Her work offers two representations of the young woman and asks us to choose, to reflect, to think and associate these with certain realities and experiences. She asks friends and family to recall their own personal experiences with racial issues and assumptions about their identity. These stories apparently influence the images she decides to makes. Other works such as Geisha The China Doll, Calcutta Curry Boy and Bollywood Beauty present similar stereotypes which minorities in North America  may have experienced. With each of the double portraits, each individual goes through a transformation via masking of their faces and bodies with makeup and costumes which reflects the racist imagery concerning their ethnicity. “I might be opening up old wounds’ she says ‘but it’s not about throwing salt into them. It’s about opening up a conversation.”

Olivia McGilchrist, Red Dress 3

This conversation about racially problematic imagery is one which finds a connection with the various dialogues, voices and viewpoints in various contemporary art practices in the Caribbean. In 2009, Leslie showed work alongside other artists, including myself at the Rockstone & Bootheel exhibition at Real Art Ways in Connecticut. The show featured the work of artists connected to the Caribbean who were exploring various complex layers of Caribbean identity and experience. In particular there is a connection with the concerns of Renee Cox, Ebony Patterson and Marlon Griffith. In that exhibition the artists were involved in re-contextuazlising and thinking about identities via photography. Charles Landvreugd and Olivia McGilchrist’s work presented in other forums relates to this visual language of reclaiming and taking on stereotypes by using masking and cloaking of the body in reference to popular culture and thought.

The juxtaposition in Leslie’s work does play on the ideas of dual truths about individuals. How we see ourselves and how we are seen is a major point emerging from the work. The work holds two striking yet opposing points in that perhaps stereotypes do hold a version of a truth after all; and revealing that all images are constructed for desired effect. Leslie says about her work that “If one less person laughs at one less racist joke, I’m still doing my part in it.” These issues cannot be expected to be directly transplantable in the Caribbean. While we do speak about imagery and representation I don’t know that racism can be understood in the Caribbean in the same way as that which the artist attempts to counter.  Her dialogue is clearly aimed at the particular atmosphere in Canada and the U.S. but it finds kinship with the kind of work other artists are doing regionally.

See the full photo-journal story on Christina Leslie’s process and work at Wondereur

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A Report: Rape, Rudeness and Renee Cox

The first research symposium at the Edna Manley College was held last week, with the highlight being the appearance and participation of controversial New York artist Renee Cox. Cox gave an artists talk to keen students and staff amongst book shelves and tables in the library. She was very animated in her delivery garnering frequent laughter from the audience. The level of intimacy achieved with the audience was such that students lacked no reserve in questioning and speaking to the artists. Foundation year students were moved to comment multiple times and a final year student made reference about the artists ego as being integral to his enjoyment of her work. Cox spoke about problems with how her pregnant body was viewed by the art world and society as being the driving influence behind the 'Yo Mama' series. She even provided a 'sneak peek' at new work which is inspired by 'Desperate Housewives' and the St. Andrew upperclass housewife set. The driving influence being the need to create images where black women are given the space to 'luxuriate in depression' . She also spoke of her controversial match with ex-Mayor Giuliani back in 1996, referring to the former mayor as a greasy-haired Italian with a bad comb-over who knew nothing about Photography. In another mouthful, ignorant ebonics-speaking black women were also reproached for missing the message in her work and the intention of it being made for 'them'. This made me think about the commitment that artists have to make in using racial material in their work. Are artists required to reflect the politics in their work in their speech and lives? Should they be held as responsible as 'regular citizens' for their viewpoints and how important is intention to how a work functions for its public? Omari Ra answers this in stating in his presentation that he believed artists had citizens rights and responsibilities only and not specifically a free pass to do as he or she pleases.

On the Thursday, when the symposium began with Cox as the keynote speaker, I arrived just in time to hear her tell students to do first and ask later before descending the podium. An audience member noted that it was a more reserved Cox that presented that morning, perhaps due to the setting as an official research symposium.
Panel 1 comprised of Taynia Nethersole, Clinton Hutton, Marcia Hextall and Kim Robinson-Walcott and was the most comprehensive in its scope. Taynia Nethersole spoke about the law in relation to censorship as being very subjective. The basic guideline being that the rights and freedoms of the individual should not infringe on the rights and freedom of others or the public interest. She also spoke about the law being used to label an artwork seen as having no artistic value as being obscene. Concerns raised are that often persons call to make judgements about the artistic value of something are often not qualified to do so. An individual judges what is in public interest and not a majority therefore rulings are often personal matters and not necessarily rooted in the
'law'.

Clinton Hutton's take on the role of censorship in the arts in the Caribbean involved the cultural and religious censure of African slaves in plantation society. His vociferous quotations of ethnological texts was surely strategically placed to incite the black members of the audience to nod heads and cause the caucasian audience members to feel discomfort in their seats. His conclusion from his research was that whatever was considered white was beautiful and whatever was black was ugly. This ugliness and 'love of vice' was not curable by our own devices but had to be assisted through the colonizing powers thus the attempted erasure of African heritage.

Kim Robinson-Walcott gave a very entertaining talk which involved her doing a slow rap from the now popular Kiprich track mimicking Zebra and Tiger. She clearly stated that she enjoyed the beat of the music, calling it 'cute and catchy'. Her issue was not the catchiness but with a specific section of the song which described graphically and admittedly quite lyrically, the events of a possible rape. Her frustration then stemmed from attempts to have the song removed from the air waves to have the censured song re-appear with a beep at the last words of each line. This she did not find satisfying as any one could figure out the missing words. I say possible rape as a debate ensued about this. Was it rape or what Carolyn Cooper called a 'bait and switch'. Cooper was however quick to say that she was not defending slackness but looking at the possiblities of the song. Winston Campbell, who later presented on the Visual arts panel, chided Robinson-Walcott for taking the song out of the context of the mimicry of dancehall rivalry. This was countered with the general sentiment that context or not, a public description of a rape for entertainment purposes is never appropriate. This led her to her main area of Anthony Winkler's 'healthy sexual references'. Robinson-Walcott introduced a kind of binary system for measuring 'slackness' which perhaps could guide in the censorship process. 'Slackness' and obscenity could be 'fun' or harmful, meaningless or meaningful. Intention is apparently all. This again made me think of the issue of artistic license and freedom of speech. Does the title 'art' make slackness alright in society. Do artists use slackness and controversy as a poltical tool and what does that do to perceptions of art and artists?

On a last note Karl Fagan, a 2nd year student who presented a lengthy paper, must be commended for almost outshining several other presenters at the symposium. He obviously had an opinion and was not shy or rudimentary in his expression of it. Censorship functions within some of the very instituions who don a progressive self-image such as the Edna Manley College. Censorship of students for final year shows, censorship of certain ideas in certain courses and departments. To reference Winston Campbell, society seemingly cannot exist wtthout censorship as social groups do have rules and guidelines for appropriate behaviour. Is Censorship linked to power? Perhaps as Omari Ra suggests censorship is not linked to morality as such but political agenda. Do we judge the our popular culture, the dancehall, with the same code as, our high culture?

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NEW DISCUSSIONS:“CENSORSHIP AND THE ARTS IN THE CARIBBEAN”

The question of freedom of expression in the arts is currently receiving a lot of attention in many parts of the world. While many artists are pushing the limits of the acceptable, with deliberately provocative works, the public exhibition and support of their work has resulted in many controversies, fueled by new, or renewed, political and religious sensibilities and the enhanced exposure provided by the media. This debate has special significance in the postcolonial world, where the arts have conventionally been seen as crucial to the development of a more equitable society, or nation-building, and a confident sense of cultural self. This is evident in state-sponsored, independent and explicitly dissident artistic expressions alike. In the Caribbean, this moral-political imperative exists in uneasy tension with a well-established tradition of freedom of expression within the artistic community and subversive tendencies within the popular culture.
There have been several incidents recently in Jamaica that have given particular urgency to the subjects of freedom of expression and censorship and the arts. For instance, the controversy about a new Emancipation monument – Laura Facey’s Redemption Song (2003) in New Kingston – mainly concerned the nudity of the two central figures and its appropriateness to the subject. This resulted in vigorous debate in the local media about what is and what is not acceptable in public art, who should decide on how subjects of collective interest are publicly represented in the arts, and whether this differs from the fine arts in other, more private contexts. The provocative music, dance style and fashion of Jamaican Dancehall culture, on the other hand, have not only become dominant in the local popular culture but have spread throughout the Caribbean and its Diaspora in North America and Europe. This Dancehall culture is seen by its critics as socially counterproductive and therefore rightfully subject to censorship. Jamaican-style “Passa Passa” street parties have been banned by authorities in Barbados, Grenada and Guyana and there have been calls, locally, to curtail the use of indecent or abusive language, which is in any case illegal in Jamaica, and provocative, potentially physically hazardous dance moves such as the “Dutty Wine” at Dancehall events. Several popular Jamaican Dancehall artistes have also become internationally controversial because of their violently homophobic lyrics and this has led to the cancellation of some of their concerts in North America and Europe. Advocates of Dancehall culture have argued, in contrast, that it deliberately challenges middle class moral norms and is held by its critics to more restrictive moral standards than Caribbean “high culture”, such as the fine arts and theatre, where provocative content is more likely to be tolerated in the name of artistic freedom.
These Jamaican examples well illustrate that the subject of freedom of expression and its relation to the social role of the arts is central to the debates that shape the arts in the Caribbean and must be taken seriously by Caribbean artists, cultural institutions, the media and audiences alike. While the subject is receiving intermittent attention in the regional media and in some of the critical writing about contemporary Caribbean culture, there has been insufficient structured debate thus far that confronts the full range of viewpoints and the issues that arise in the different areas of cultural production. Nor has sufficient attention been paid to its significant implications for arts education in the region. The Edna Manley College, as the main tertiary educational institution dedicated to the visual and performing arts in the Anglophone Caribbean, has thus decided to make it the subject of its emerging research, public discussion and publication programme.
The “Censorship and the Arts in the Caribbean” project has two key components. The first is the staging of two symposiums on the subject. The first such symposium will be a full-day event held on March 22, 2007. This event will consist of a keynote address by Renee Cox, a prominent Jamaican-American photographer and performance artist who has personally encountered major controversy and efforts at censorship in response to her often very provocative work. The keynote presentation will be followed by three panel discussions, one in the morning and two in the afternoon, that will explore various positions on the issues at hand and allow for audience interventions. This will be followed by an open discussion at the end of the day. Each panel will have four panelists and a moderator, selected from Edna Manley College faculty and students and other artists, cultural administrators, media practitioners, religious spokespersons and cultural critics based in Jamaica. In selecting these panelists, care will be taken to represent a broad range of perspectives and issues relevant to the Caribbean and its Diaspora.
The second symposium will be a half-day event and will be held in October 2007, on a date yet to be determined. The main purpose of the second event is to revisit and reflect on the issues raised in the first symposium and to create an opportunity for the presentation of responses and alternate views. It will consist of a keynote presentation and at least one panel. Persons from the local or regional media, the academy, the art world, and the Church will be considered as keynote speakers or panelists. The discussion panel(s) will, as before, consist of four panelists and a moderator and will be selected from the same categories as the first panels.
In terms of audiences, the symposiums are mainly directed at the Edna Manley College faculty and students but, given the subject, should attract more widespread attention and participation. The symposiums will be free and open to the public and will be well-publicized in the local media.
The second component of the project is the publication of the papers presented at the symposiums which will serve as a resource for further debate on the subject. This will be done in a specially-themed edition of the Edna Manley College’s new arts journal, which will become an annual or biennial publication. This publication will mainly be circulated in Jamaica, for the benefit of the cultural, educational and academic communities here but the journal should also be available to overseas interests. It will be sold at an affordable, cost-based price to facilitate broad access. Distribution arrangements are to be worked out and may involve a local publisher or printed matter distributor.
- post contributed by Veerle Poupeye

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Biennial 07: Invitation to Discuss

This biennial is a particularly important exhibition for various reasons. It stands out as being one of the first years where on can think of a set of artists being shown who utilise digital media and processes. Renee Cox, controversial New York-based artist is exhibiting several photographs and students from Edna Manley College are exhibiting alongside seasoned practitioners. There are many more questions that could be asked and discussed in response to the Biennial and I invite you to do so here. It is remarkable also that I have not seen as much publicity for such an immense exhibition. Which artists stood out for you? What does a show like this say about Jamaican culture and its industries? How does this show affect audiences? etc.

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