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RAGGA NYC: All the Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another

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RAGGA NYC: All the Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another 05.03.17–06.25.17 NEW MUSEUM ALL THE THREATENED AND DELICIOUS THINGS JOINING ONE ANOTHER 1 MISSION RAGGA NYC is a hybrid of ideas that began and POC history is often relegated to the as late-night conversations about familial backs of the history books, if it’s included at BECAUSE THE COLLECTIVE MEMO- island roots, current social politics, empanadas all. Vodou, for example—a religion with roots vs. beef patties, pum pum shorts, scamming, in non-gender-binary practice, which and a longing for an authentic dancehall liberated Haiti from French control—is party that would also provide a safe space demonized in contemporary media and pop RY WAS TOO OFTEN WIPED OUT, for queer Caribbeans and their kin. It is culture. And as Maya Monès mentions in her RAGGA’s mission to grow, congregate, interview, “Like most Dominican families, educate, and highlight the queer Caribbean mine refrained from exploring our roots, community and our allies through interviews leaving me with a cloudy sense of pride in a THE CARIBBEAN WRITER MUST and events curated by me, Christopher sort of racial limbo. It felt like I was facing a Udemezue (Neon Christina). With a focus on foggy mirror, with a deep yearning to see and the arts, politics, and culture, RAGGA brings embrace the person who stood opposite me.” you exhibitions, publications, media From the Haitian Revolution’s religious spark; coverage, and of course bashments. RAGGA from the irony of William Thomas Beckford, “DIG DEEP” INTO THIS MEMORY NYC: all things cunt and Caribbean. the largest plantation owner in Jamaica, For me, my road to self-love and pride fleeing his family in England because he was has been rooted in knowing where I come gay; from the origins of witchcraft in West from. Looking into Caribbean history, Africa—the more I looked back, the more I FOLLOWING THE LATENT SIGNS spirituality, and my people as a whole has garnered strength, yet still yearned to see fast-tracked a sense of self-worth and myself. Where is my queer self? What are the strength—especially given the current state stories of my trans sisters during the fight for of the country and the world. White Americans freedom in Trinidad and Tobago? What are take for granted that their history and the stories of my femme brothers in Puerto THAT HE HAS PICKED UP IN THE religions are the mainstream in this country Rico’s rebellions against the Spaniards? We and abroad. People of color at large, and were there too. We have always been here. I Caribbean people living here in the US, are want to see myself. This exhibit is the seed often disconnected from their own story. The of all these questions, which I hope we will EVERYDAY WORLD... BECAUSE image of the sad slave is all I knew. All the grow and build together. heroes on TV are white; all the heroes in the history books are white. Where do I find my THE CARIBBEAN CONSCIOUSNESS reflection? I can’t find her. To this day, queer —Christopher Udemezue (Neon Christina) WAS BROKEN UP BY STERILE BARRIERS, THE WRITER MUST BE ABLE TO GIVE EXPRESSION TO ALL THOSE OCCASIONS WHEN THESE BARRIERS WERE PARTIALLY BROKEN. —ÉDOUARD GLISSANT Cover Photo: Jason Rodgers 2 3 RAGGA NYC: All the threatened and delicious things joining one another The New Museum’s Department of Education figure are centered on cinder blocks. Marbled was declared in Haiti, and October 27, 1979, exhibition space, serving as a vibrant call for and Public Engagement presents the wisps of bluish grey and black mark the the day St. Vincent gained independence. reflection and to rise. exhibition and residency “RAGGA NYC: All figure’s glossy surface. The work’s title alludes The positions of the stars on the evening At its core, RAGGA is committed to fostering the threatened and delicious things joining to a variety of stone commonly known as of the Haitian Revolution are legendary, conversations between queer Caribbean one another.” RAGGA NYC, a platform “creole marble,” which came from Pickens and were cited by the Vodou practitioners artists and allies. These often start with founded by Christopher Udemezue, connects County, Georgia, and could be purchased who led the rebellion. The largest totem, interviews that Udemezue conducts with RAGGA a community of queer Caribbean artists during the nineteenth and early twentieth representing the sun, is partially visible members about how their backgrounds have and allies working across a wide range of centuries in three tones: light creole, through a Plexiglas trapdoor, encircled by affected their work and lives, and continue disciplines—including visual art, fashion, and medium creole, and dark creole. The stone smaller totems that represent Venus, during small dinner parties RAGGA hosts every poetry—to explore how race, sexuality, quarry originally belonged to the Cherokee Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars. Each consists of few months. During the residency, RAGGA will gender, heritage, and history inform their Nation but, after the passage of Andrew a wooden base supporting an assemblage host a private dinner focused on wellness work and their lives. RAGGA fosters a network Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, John that combines personal items and materials and roots, organized by cofounder of Enroot and an extended family that make space for Darnell assumed control of the land and native to the Caribbean. In this installation, Collective DeVonn Francis, horticultural solidarity, celebration, and expression, founded the Georgia Marble Company on it. Lazard and Liverpool have inverted ground therapist Pamela Koch, and urban herbalist with deep commitments to education and During the Civil War, Darnell flew a Union flag and sky, placing a celestial landscape Antonia Estela Pérez. In addition, the Resource grassroots organizing. The exhibition over his property despite its location in a beneath our feet. Center will include publications and manuals and public programming during RAGGA’s Confederate zone, and after the war, Georgia The title of Lazard and Liverpool’s piece from writers, herbalists, activists, and DJs residency explore Afro-Caribbean Diasporic Marble was used to construct most derives from Glissant, who writes, “I call involved with RAGGA, providing a wider view traditions with a group of artists and activists government monuments, including the Lincoln Chaos-monde the current shock of so many of work produced by members of this loose, who take up Édouard Glissant’s claim Memorial. Despite its title, Lewis’s sculpture cultures that flare up, repel themselves, rapidly growing collective. that “the language of the Caribbean artist is in fact not made of this marble; rather, she disappear, still subsist, fall asleep, or does not originate in the obsession with uses plaster, cement, and acrylic paint. While transform, slowly or at breakneck speed: celebrating his inner self; this inner self is some works in the series include casts of the these bursts... we cannot predict.” Glissant inseparable from the future evolution of artist’s face or the faces of her friends, advocated for the right to opacity, a his community [in which] he is his own others refuse overt representation, instead protective barrier to resist the reductiveness ethnologist, historian, [and] linguist.” The presenting cacti as oblique stand-ins for a of humanism, which he argued was deeply exhibition title quotes Glissant’s description figure. As plants transplanted to radically tied to the colonial enterprise. In this of a world in which beings can come different climates where they nevertheless installation, Lazard and Liverpool investigate together under a veil of opacity and preserve thrive, the cacti serve as a metaphor for the syncretism, the assimilation of religious difference in a new model of relation. diasporic condition. practices often described as a natural Udemezue started RAGGA in 2015 after Works in Paul Anthony Smith’s Grey Area merging of disparate beliefs and customs, a having thrown queer Caribbean parties in series layer grainy silkscreened images definition that obscures the great violence of New York City for several years. Hoping to of male acquaintances—whom Smith the Christianization of the colonies. In reality, create a platform that would allow for greater encountered while back in his hometown in syncretism was a method of survival and a reflection and collaboration within his Jamaica for his uncle’s funeral—alongside strategic way of hiding of one practice within community, he began interviewing queer images of a cemetery burial ground, the guise of another. By burying sacred Caribbean artists whom he admired, asking suggesting a complex relationship to an objects and pieces of recording technology how their backgrounds affected their island he left as a child. Grey Area, the beneath the gallery floor, Chaos-monde uses work and lives. Through these conversations, works’ title, describes a liminal state concealment as a protective measure and partially reproduced in this publication, between two mutually exclusive categories: an expansive gesture against the transparent commonalities emerge among members’ a zone where two things intersect and performance of Caribbean identity. stories and aspirations: to heal, to reconnect well-known distinctions become troubled, a Poetry forms a foundation for the to ancestral histories, to cultivate a distinctly configuration from which something new residency. Shanekia McIntosh presents queer Caribbean community, to imagine might emerge. “Touched” (2017), a new poem in the new models of kinship. Christopher Udemezue’s photographs exhibition recounting her grandmother’s The exhibition includes sculptures from return to the legend of Queen Nanny, the hair-braiding and tales of Queen Nanny, Renée Stout’s Roots and Charms series, eighteenth-century Obeah woman who weaving together their stories. Joey De which nod to the hand-painted signs advertising escaped slavery with her brothers and became Jesus’s handwritten poems, titled “Astrolabe elixirs and healing on the storefronts of leader of the Jamaican Maroons, and to the / Curse 1, 2 & 3” (2017), form rich cosmologies root medicine shops in New Orleans and Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman, led by through words and shape.
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