Resisting Paradise Curator: Marina Reyes Franco Small Gallery

Resisting Paradise Curator: Marina Reyes Franco Small Gallery “This may be obvious to some, but it is important to remember that the use of paradise is neither islands, and presented the convenience ambivalent nor static even when it fixes the region of modern travel to a tropical setting outside time and space; paradise is always on some that happened to be far from WWII’s level signifying colonial, sexualized, racialized, 3 and gendered space/object/desire.” geography of conflict . - Angelique V. Nixon1 These marketing strategies have shifted In June 2018, “Discover Puerto Rico” very little in the intervening decades. was announced as the name of the Then, like now, we were in the midst island’s new destination marketing of an economic depression, yet there organization and overseer of its tourism was also a revolt against the creation “product” and national “brand.” of a resort-centered identity and its After 82 years, Puerto Rico was embracing accompanying depiction of the island’s the same slogan that marketers had inhabitants as humble servants. Early on, used in the 1930s to promote the island, Puerto Ricans understood it as a neo- then under the direct colonial rule of the colonial enterprise that would foster United States. Since Puerto Rico became dependence on the United States. a possession of the United States in In her columns in La Democracia, 1898, fantasies of exoticism, abundance, journalist Ruby Black wrote about her and misery have coexisted with the contempt for Winship and compared States’ need to justify intervention. him to author Sinclair Lewis’s fictional The year 1937 marked a departure from character George Babbitt, a man previous approaches to poverty and absorbed by “fishing, golf and tourism.” underdevelopment in Puerto Rico, which “Hunger, rum, death, blood,” she wrote; had focused on the economic problems “Babbitt the tourist has us imprisoned in of the locals. It was then that Governor chains of trout, with walls of golf balls.4” Blanton Winship responded to Stateside As the rumbles of independence spread backlash against his administration’s through the region in the mid-20th massacre of pro-independence civilians century, the industry kicked into full with a transformative advertising and gear, intertwining national identity with propaganda campaign aimed at selling corporate branding. A similar fate befell a pacified, glamourous island2. nations throughout the Caribbean: Then, as in our debt-ridden, protest- the drive towards a version of heavy present, tourism was promoted development that is bent on by those in power as the only way up. accommodating foreigners becomes Their message incorporated images of a historical trap, and what we prize white-skinned, dark-haired women as about our islands is destroyed. an embodiment of Puerto Rico’s role Now these nations have to compete as the exotic other under the United with each other for tourism dollars or States flag; it equated products such as else, defy interpretation. rum and coffee with the identity of the Though geographically close, that permeates all aspects of life, Caribbean artists are often unable to transforming a society into one travel and show work within the region. that serves the tourist experience. Intra-regional exchange is challenged Resisting Paradise explores what by variations in language and colonial happens when tourism also applies history, while flight routes prioritize the to bodies—when sex and desire are also convenience of visitors coming from the a currency. The projects of colonialism United States or Europe, mirroring the and empire have left an undeniable migration patterns of many post-colonial mark on Caribbean culture by shaping subjects. Resisting Paradise presents the way we relate to ourselves, to each an opportunity to establish a much- other, and to nature itself. In their work, needed regional dialogue. The exhibition these artists envision new paradigms features works by Deborah Anzinger, of life in the region and its diaspora by Leasho Johnson, and Joiri Minaya, challenging preconceived notions of showing how Caribbean artists are what it means to be Caribbean, that is a taking control of the narratives and colonial, racialized, sexualized subject. images that convey us to others. Hailing from Jamaica and the Dominican Deborah Anzinger’s recent body of work Republic and its diasporas, the artists work aesthetically erodes understandings at the intersections of tourism, sexuality, of land and bodies by using plants, gender, environmental concerns, music, styrofoam, mirrors, and synthetic afro- and the internet. Through their work, kinky hair to explore the intersectionality these artists reference shared histories between race, gender, sexuality, ecology, of invasion, slavery, and economic and the environment. For Anzinger, the exploitation of natural resources— project of colonialism—the foundation forces which, in turn, translate into the of capitalism—has affected how people commodification of Caribbean bodies relate to each other and to the lands in a Western imagining of paradisiacal that they inhabit, and therefore these tourist destinations. The show’s title inherited understandings must be draws inspiration from a book by reshaped. Her pictorial approach in Coy Bahamian writer Angelique V. Nixon, is characterized by the use of sensually which discusses the perils of living suggestive shapes and evocations in a crafted, imagined paradise, of landscapes, in which various kinds of and the powerful ways in which penetrations are happening. While some cultural workers resist and transform of her brush strokes resemble marks those given narratives. made by digital interventions, they are careful manual constructions revealing The shared Caribbean experience a worldview where the natural and of the plantation-to-resort model artificial are equivalent. The mirrors she of economic development makes embeds in her paintings likewise offer a evident the transition from slavery to disruption of the subject/object binary by a service economy under the visitor- implicating the viewer in their reflection. economy regime. This term is used to Anzinger’s abstractions—in referencing denote economic activity generated nature and the artist’s own body—are a by people who visit a given place and statement of their agency and potential. Her video The Distraction of Symbolism Johnson has long referenced dancehall delves deeper into her assertion that the music and its influence on culture within plantation is the birthplace of our current his work. In the context of this piece, the economic regime—the place where invocation of the soundboy—a figure both land and body were exploited—by that metaphorically kills his opponents placing her own pregnant self among in battle—addresses otherness, violence, images of rivers, plants, and sinkholes, and the normalization of death in while a dialogue addresses the issue of relation to blackness. In the mural, the water shortages and lack of access to avatar—a cross between a Dunny Doll, natural resources. a blackface character, and the Venus of Willendorf—poses in daring, provocative Leasho Johnson’s monumental wall ways that reclaim power over its piece Death of the Soundboy digitally own body and bring contemporary integrates and modifies scenes from a dancehall fearlessness into an otherwise series of 19th century tropical landscape oppressive scenario. paintings and etchings by artists such as J.B. Kidd and William Clarke, Joiri Minaya’s works explore the whose picturesque works about the objectification and interchangeability conditions of life, labour, and nature in of women’s bodies and landscape in the Caribbean were meant to convey visual culture, as well as patterns that pro-colonial messages to Europeans. provide camouflage and hypervisibility. These artists depicted black identity and Often, her works make a link between Caribbean landscapes through the lens the pictorial representation of brown and of the oppressor, creating works that black women from tropical geographies, were often misinterpreted as factual and the way their bodies are still verification of how things were in the represented in contemporaneity as a past, serving to manifest, preserve, and continuation of the same foreign, promote racist perspectives of history. male gaze. Minaya frequently Other source imagery is taken from incorporates contemporary “tropical” paintings by Richard Ansdell and Marcel prints in her work, which reference Antoine Verdier, whose depictions of the scientific drawings used to classify enslaved people in the United States and facilitate the study of colonial, and Antigua, respectively, were meant tropical possessions. The video to expose European audiences to the Siboney documents the arduous brutality of that system and their own process of Minaya painting a detailed complicity in it5. In his piece, Johnson mural in a museum featuring digitally constructs an even more a tropical pattern inspired by a found fantastical landscape by sampling piece of fabric. Throughout the process, fragments of the other artists’ work in a the artist’s own reflections on her digital collage, and drops his avatar into actions appear as captions. The breathy, the mix as a figure of carnal resistance. sensual version of the song “Siboney,” The Soundboy in the work’s title refers as performed by Connie Francis, to the Jamaican term for disc jockeys, plays as Minaya pours water over which emerged in the country’s reggae/ her white dress and rubs herself against dancehall scene of

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