Creole in the Archive: Imagery, Presence and Location of the Caribbean Figure
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 9z714
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Rowman & Littlefield
- ISBN
- 9781783482207
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This monograph is the culmination of 10 years of research whose starting point is Kempadoo’s PhD completed in 2008. The scale and complexity of primary research since then, involving archival research, interviews and documentation across Trinidad, Guyana, and UK, enabled the monograph to formulate creole practice and concepts for Caribbean visual material analysing historical and contemporary works. Key to conceiving the archive is recovering and generating a disparate collection of visual material, combining early formal records with informal material and ephemera from historically unknown Caribbean families. Other methods included accessing private locations such as plantations, interviewing workers, and many artists.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This monograph is the culmination of 10 years research of visual material associated with Caribbean countries Trinidad and Guyana. Kempadoo proposes a new concept for framing Caribbean visual archives. The starting point of the research is to analyse visual material associated with the period 1850s to 1960s, deemed particularly relevant to photography being established and developed as a primary technology for visualising the then British colonies. The book then explores the relationship between the historical material and contemporary artworks by Caribbean visual artists. Kempadoo argues that it is through the analysis of colonial visual material, ‘read’ in close proximity to contemporary artworks and visual documentation, that we are able to reframe the colonial past to develop knowledge of the Caribbean figure as decolonial.
Kempadoo’s book is the first to develop a creole practice and concept for Caribbean visual material of historical and contemporary works. Tracing the concept of creolisation as a hybrid discourse that is unique to the Caribbean’s brutal history involving slavery and indentureship, Kempadoo addresses the primacy of colonial plantation economies and contemporary postcolonial migration. As an artist she embeds her creole practice to develop an expanded and poetic knowledge of Caribbean visual history, art and culture. Her book re-conceives the archive through: identifying additional alternative visual materials drawn from informal archives; developing visual analysis methods for material emergent from photography and visual culture theory; expanding the archive through the creation of audio visual documentation and visual artworks.
Kempadoo was invited to present papers and artist talks to several international conferences and symposia that contributed to the development of the book and the dissemination of the research. These include: keynote speaker to Sensing the Caribbean: Art, Culture, History, and the Sensory Turn (2017), University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Sonic Scenes Symposium, MIT, Boston (2018).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
