Events' Realm

The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to present the panel discussion We Have Met Before, Revisited, which will take place at the National Gallery on Friday, October 13, 2017, starting at 1:45 pm. The discussion is presented as part of the Edna Manley College’s Rex Nettleford Arts Conference 2017, for which the National Gallery serves as a partner institution. The panel discussion will be chaired by Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Independent Curator. The panellists are: Moji Anderson, Lecturer, Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, UWI-Mona; Olayinka Jacobs-Bonnick, British Council Country Director, Jamaica; Leasho Johnson, Jamaican artist in We Have Met Before; and Herbie Miller, Director, Jamaica Music Museum, Institute of Jamaica.

The panel discussion is part of the programming for We Have Met Before, which on view at the National Gallery until November 4, 2017 and which is presented in collaboration with the British Council. The exhibition explores a group of contemporary and artistic interpretations of legacies of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and chattel slavery in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Each of the four featured artists - Graham Fagen (Scotland), Joscelyn Gardner (Barbados), Leasho Johnson (Jamaica) and Ingrid Pollard (Guyana/England) – delves into archival material, popular culture and personal perspective to develop and substantiate visual iconographies that present actual and imagined narratives about the African enslaved and their descendants. Combined, their work invites new perspectives and dialogues on what is well-established subject in Caribbean art. We Have Met Before is presented in collaboration with the British Council.

The present panel discussion is the second such event to accompany We Have Met Before. The first panel discussion was held on September 23, the day after the exhibition opening, and focused on the perspectives of the artists in the exhibition. The second edition, We Have Met Before, Revisited, explores the broader implications of what is addressed in the exhibition, in terms of its cultural, social and political implications, including the gender dimensions and the critical responses to date. The panel will also consider other cultural expressions of Slavery and its afterlives, especially in the literary and performing arts, and the ways in which creative forms can contribute to the engagement or re-engagement of those histories with contemporary audiences; especially for those who may believe themselves to be chronologically and psychologically removed from those events.

In keeping with the conference theme, the discussion will consider the relationship between these issues and the “millennial” – a term that has come into vogue in the last decade or so and coined to identify the generation of individuals who came of age at the beginning of the 21st century or who were born since. The social and cultural experience of the “millennials” coincides precisely with a number of human achievements, for example the advances of the digital age, which have significantly transformed the ways in ideas and narratives can be expressed, accessed and perpetuated. This experience is also framed in a widening array of urgent global crises—social, political and environmental—that call for new forms of engagement and activism, even though most of these crises are rooted in histories such as those addressed in We Have Met Before. Bearing this in mind, this discussion considers that cultural representations of slavery for 21st century Jamaica and the wider Caribbean must resonate with the social and cultural experiences of such groups and the urgencies of the present moment, in tandem with the changing roles and responsibilities of the artist.

The panel discussion We Have Met Before, Revisited is free and open to the public. Visitors will also have the opportunity to view the We Have Met Before exhibition, as well as the other exhibitions that are currently on view at the National Gallery, including the Annabella and Peter Proudlock Collection. The panel discussion will also be live-streamed on the National Gallery’s main Facebook page.

Kingston

Jamaica

Orange Street

National Gallery of Jamaica

Panel Discussion - "We Have Met Before, Revisited"

The National Gallery of Jamaica in partnership with the British Council will be hosting an art exhibition from September 22-November 4, 2017. The show is entitled: We Have Met Before and features Graham Fagen, Joscelyn Gardner, Ingrid Pollard, and Leasho Johnson.

This exhibition revisits the challenging subject of trans-Atlantic slavery and its afterlives in the contemporary world, seen through the eyes of four contemporary artists. Each artist brings a distinctive perspective with work that was created in different locales, different media, and at different points in time.

The Scottish artist Graham Fagen is represented by a video and sound installation called The Slave’s Lament, which was also shown at the 2015 Venice Biennale. The work is based on a 1792 song written by Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns, in which an enslaved man in Virginia expresses his longing for his distant homeland of Senegal. In Fagen’s interpretation, the song is performed by the reggae singer Ghetto Priest, a Rastafarian. Fagen’s work also acknowledges Scottish involvement in slavery in the Americas, which may be well-known in the Caribbean, but is still part of the unacknowledged history of Scotland.

The Jamaican artist Leasho Johnson is the youngest artist in the group and presents a visually and conceptually explosive mix of history and contemporary popular culture, with strong references to the musical genre Dancehall and graffiti art. Like the other three artists, he often uses historical source material and features a repertoire of cartoon-like female and gender-ambivalent figures in various provocative poses. In some of his recent work, drowned bodies with provocatively placed palm tree extensions become sexualized tropical islands, reminiscent of the violent histories of the Caribbean archipelago. Johnson examines the politics of sexual objectification and the contradictions of gender and sexuality in contemporary Jamaican culture and not only points to the roots of these issues in the histories of colonization, slavery, exploitation and social inequality, but also acknowledges their revolutionary, counter-hegemonic potential in the present.

Born in Georgetown, Guyana, British artist Ingrid Pollard works mainly in analogue photographic media. The Boy Who Watches Ships Go By (2002) is the oldest body of work in this exhibition and consists of images of land, sea, boats and historical documents that subtly evoke the histories, visible and invisible, of Sunderland Point in northern England, which was once a thriving seaport in the Triangular Trade. The resulting narrative revolves around the story of Sambo, a young boy and servant, presumably enslaved, who travelled with the captain of the Globe from Kingston, Jamaica, who fell ill and died when he arrived in England. His death, it was believed, was from a disease he allegedly contracted in England to which he had no immunity; and acts as a metaphor for the fate of those who lost their lives and freedom as a result of their contact with European slave traders. Sambo was, according to local lore, buried at Sunderland Point in 1739.

The final artist is Joscelyn Gardner, who is from Barbados and presently lives and works in Canada. She is represented by two full series of lithographs – Plantation Poker (2004), Creole Portraits II (2007) and a selection of lithographs from the Creole Portraits III (2009- 2011) series, which are exhibited as installations with other elements. In these prints, which conform to the conventions of natural history illustrations, intricate African braided hairstyles morph into the instruments of torture that were used during slavery. A more specific reference to sexual abuse is added in the imagery in Plantation Poker, where the triangular shape of the hair references female pubic hair. The lovely flowers in Creole Portraits III are plants that were used by enslaved women to secretly end unwanted pregnancies. While deceptively delicate and exquisitely beautiful, the prints powerfully invoke the dehumanizing cruelty of plantation slavery. Gardner’s body of work is inspired by the infamous diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, a plantation overseer in Jamaica in the mid-18th century, who recorded with scientific precision his many forced sexual exploits and the cruel punishments he inflicted on the enslaved.

We Have Met Before revisits this complex and territory and invites the viewer into a conversation about Slavery and its legacy, where various perspectives can be expressed. The resulting conversations may be difficult but we believe that we must have them, as they are central to the histories that have shaped and continue to shape the contemporary Caribbean world, and we hope that this exhibition will contribute to this necessary process.

The exhibition will open on Friday, September 22, at 6:30 pm., at the National Gallery of Jamaica. This event is free and open to the public and all are cordially invited. Associated  programming will be advertised separately.

Events at National Gallery of Jamaica, Jamaica

Panel Discussion - "We Have Met Before, Revisited"

We Have Met Before