Caribbean Beat — November/December 2017 (#148)

Courtesy Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago Collection and the Chinese American Museum
Woman with Chickens (1958, oil on board), by Trinidadian Carlisle Chang. In the early to mid 1950s, Chang studied in London and Italy and also spent a
formative year in New York City. Like many Caribbean artists at that time, Chang sought to find the primordial in what he hoped would become a national
art movement, before and after Independence
Circuits of mobility are important in terms of the exchange
and encounter ofideas, people, images, multiracial and biracial
identities, the influence of Afro-Asian interconnections, and
the impact of the Second World War on the movement of
people within the Caribbean and internationally. Circles and
Circuits draws attention to the postwar period leading up to,
during, and after Independence movements in the Caribbean
in the 1960s. As these countries found their national voices,
the impact of creating national identities on artists in the
Caribbean is evident in their work and in the writings of their
peers, both domestically and in diasporic art circuits abroad.
Artists sought primordial “authenticity” and new and old
iconographies of nation-building, which included looking to
their indigenous and multi-ethnic histories: Amerindian and
Taíno arts and cultures, festivals and dances such as Carnival,
Hosay, congo, and bélé, as well as nature in relation to religion
and everyday popular culture.
The Circles and Circuits exhibitions concentrate on the work of
artists who are part of the Chinese Caribbean diaspora in North
America, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Panama. Larger immigrant
populations and political, economic, and social-cultural
conditions — including the development of national museums
and art schools, as well as training abroad — spurred the formation
of pipelines of thought and information with peers through
major international hubs. These transnational circuits generated
rich art practices during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
in the Chinese diasporic and Caribbean artistic communities.
During the past century, the Chinese Caribbean diaspora
has travelled and resettled outside the Caribbean. Toronto
and New York, for example, have notably large populations of
Chinese Caribbean diasporic communities. Living and working
in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, Canada, and
the United States, each of the artists in Circles and Circuits is part
of multiple circles and networks of communities and historic
contextual influences, each with their own path to the work they
create.
52 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM