From the SelectedWorks of Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Fall 2019

Andil Gosine's "Cane Portraiture" and the Aesthetics of Indenture Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Available at: https://works.bepress.com/matthewryansmith/160/

by Matthew Ryan Smith

The ‘kala pani,’ the black water they were forced to cross and which erased behind them all traces, broke all ties, engulfed their memory so not this land, not this island, no, exile. Who can understand now that we are in the third or fourth generation? Who wants to understand such an existence in absence, the lack of belonging?

— Ananda Devi, Le Voile de Draupadi1

50 \ ndil Gosine’s Cane Portraiture emerges from a set AESTHETICS OF INDENTURE of conditions that aestheticizes the social history of indentured labourers in the Caribbean through Cane Portraiture participant-driven performances. The selection of the relational aesthetics model theorized by Bourriaud, which Asugar cane for the backdrop in these performances functions characterizes the rise of participatory frameworks in visual art as an indexical reference to the cultural memory of Caribbean practice during the mid-1990s. For Bourriaud, relational aesthetics diaspora. It also emphasizes sugar’s problematic relationship manufacture an interhuman sphere of rhizomatic connections; to the history of indenture. During preparatory research for the these unpredictable, transactive exchanges between participants work, Gosine mulled over his family’s photo albums that feature and the artist support his notion of relational aesthetics as “a set him and his family inside Trinidadian photo studios from the of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical 1960s and 70s. In the photos are backdrops displaying iconic point of departure the whole of human relations and their social architecture such as Paris’s Eiffel Tower and London’s Big Ben context”.6 The trouble with Bourriaud’s conceptualization watchtower, in addition to other European monuments. The begins in its ethical dimensions; in the propensity of writers and existence of this vernacular imagery throughout the colonized critics to deduce what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about Caribbean demonstrates a sense of longing, feelings of nostalgia, an artwork’s collaborative dimensions. Claire Bishop maintains or idealization of Europe. that the ethical turn towards “social art” criticism is fuelled by a In Cane Portraiture, Gosine deconstructs such images of lack of rigour; that failures of critical analysis occur most when one becomes preoccupied with an artwork’s “good intentions”.7 .It follows that artworks utilizing a participatory framework tend 1). For Stuart Hall, the hegemonic presence of Europe, what he to be evaluated on their potential to strengthen the social bonds calls “Présence Européenne,” in regimes of visual representation instead of their aesthetic merit. dominate the social identity of colonial subjects.2 By inviting Cane Portraiture approximates the conceptual framework of participants—many of whom happen to be the descendents of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics model by facilitating active indentured labourers—to have their portraits taken opposite participation from audiences; however, the work implicates a sugar cane backdrop, Gosine engineers a set of connections participants in a personal and/or collective politic. As a mnemonic between the descendants of indentured labourers, the Caribbean, apparatus, the sugar cane backdrop symbolizes the migration of South Asia, and the artist himself. That being said, Cane hundreds of thousands of South Asian labourers—who were Portraiture guaranteed free passage, gainful employment, and safe passage European and European individuals amongst the sugar cane, the home (under false pretenses, and if they managed to survive)— artist implicates all participants in the history of colonialism. to European colonies throughout the Caribbean.8 In addition Doing so emphasizes that colonial states of the Global North to documented cases of sexual assault and rape committed by were built upon the exploitation of labour from the Global ship doctors during passage, coupled with unhygienic living South. This complicated and unsettled relationship with Europe conditions, those who crossed the kali pani, or “Black Waters” remains today. of the Indian Ocean, often took up residence in former slave Gosine’s Cane Portraiture quarters. They were regularly subjected to malnutrition, chronic relations surrounding “”—the dissemination of Indian illness, and overwork, leaving them seeking medical assistance labour during the 19th century—by redressing one of its most that would subsequently be docked from their pay.9 Gosine’s indispensible discourses, the “ odyssey.” Gosine’s attempt performance of Cane Portraiture shred the “social fabric” by to locate “home” within this odyssey takes on new and unresolved insinuating how exploitative systems of labour such as slavery forms. His work suggests that the pathos of displacement ebbs and indenture undercut relations between the Global North and through generations like the ocean they once crossed, yet the South;10 it is a proposition grounded in political antagonism,11 3 and their descendents where evidence of European colonialism arouses tension by is shifting and unstable; it is, as Neil Bissoondath proposes, quite literally hanging in the background—here the photograph a state of being that neither gives up the past nor accepts the fate of the present.4 Gosine’s aesthetics of indentureship offer a In Camera Lucida, ruminates on the inference critique of the relational aesthetics model proposed by Nicholas of photography as a sensorial record of experience, yet stresses Bourriaud, pointing towards the ways that indenture systems that the photograph is never representative of memory proper affect senses of displacement and cultural loss. The historical the sight by force”.12 For Barthes, photographs are not narratives presented in the work are personal and collective, easy recollections of the past; instead, they trace events, things, individual and communal; as such, the sugar cane photograph draws upon the question of home by attempting to locate its in/ preserved for posterity.13 U s i n g t h e a e s t h e t i c s o f i n d e n t u r e , G o s i n e 5 By creating a migratory, seeks to re-establish connections to the land, its people, and the Cane Portraiture imitates the physical movement of women, men, and because it presents a counter-ideology to European regimes of children during passages from to the Caribbean under the visual representation in the Caribbean since colonialism. By indenture system of labour. In doing so, this gesture provokes replacing conventional studio backdrops of European landmarks a questioning of the perception of “home” as an interminable like the Eiffel Tower with Caribbean iconography such as negotiation between the absent past and the tangible present. sugar cane, he delegitimizes idealization for Europe while transforming sugar cane into a monument comparable to the

/ 51 Eiffel Tower itself. Symbolically, this gesture relocates “home” Speaking on the integration of his dying partner into the work, away from Europe and back to Trinidad, where Gosine grew up Gonzalez-Torres confesses: before he and his family emigrated to Oshawa, Ontario. To this I was losing the most important thing in my life—Ross, with that introduces personal experience into wider constituencies home, ever. So why not punish myself of memory14—the sugar cane photograph is at once an act of even more so that, in a way, the pain would be less? This is mourning and a source of strength. It is a reminder of what home how I started letting the work go. Letting it just disappear”.16 once was and could be. The catastrophic loss of what once constituted home for MAKING “HOME” Gonzalez-Torres is visualized in works such as Untitled (Loverboys) as an allegorical representation, where mnemonic Cane Portraiture is activated during interactions with Gosine, objects of personal memory are gifted to the viewer. As it fellow participants, the photo camera, and the take-home analog happens, giving pieces of oneself (and one’s lover) away, 10.00 x 15.25 cm photograph. By offering participants a take- allegorically speaking, is essentially imitating the process of home snapshot of their likeness, Gosine replicates the service entropy itself, albeit most beautifully. of conventional portrait studios (though his images are free). Though its circumstances are noticeably different, Cane Yet, he also expands the intersubjective categories of relational Portraiture also emerges in the midst of heartbreak—the sudden aesthetics by extending the performance’s life outside the gallery and unexpected end of Gosine’s long-term relationship with his or museum where it can take on a life of its own. partner. The performance, coupled with several other works in Of the most recognized artists to utilize take-home aesthetics Gosine’s WARDROBES series, negotiate his ancestral migration is the Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose from Trinidad, the complex history surrounding indentureship, seductive installations composed of stacks of paper and heaps of and, much like Gonzalez-Torres, the understanding that love can wrapped sugar candies tantalize viewers to remove them—the exist as a surrogate for “home.” For Gosine: works are then replenished by gallery attendants according to dimensions stipulated by the artist. In works such as Untitled There was this kind of recognition of how much that (Loverboys) (1993), the scale and weight of the installation ‘home’ for me, and how emulates the actual body mass of the artist and his late partner much I was still mourning and contending with displacement Ross Laycock, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991, and from Trinidad to Canada [...] I was forced to think more about represents a type of unconventional double portrait15 what it means to see oneself as a service to labour, and [...] I began to recognize an argument about trauma, desire, labour, and migration.17

Gosine’s personal and collective histories converge in Cane Portraiture Gosine`s former partner. Both artists negotiate the trauma of loss by conceptualizing it as a physical and allegorical exchange of paper, candy, and photographs with the viewer. In this gesture of strategy that renders “invisibility visible by invoking the troubled ghosts of absent bodies”.18 Such attempts to visualize absence may reveal that “home” for Gosine remains an enigmatic and geographical amalgam of bodies, experiences, and geographical locations: his former partner, India, the kali pani, the Caribbean, and Canada. Caught in a taxonomy of inclusion and exclusion, Gosine, like many other descendents of indenture, stays “broadly connected to that experience of simultaneously not belonging anywhere and potentially belonging everywhere”.19 An ontology theorization that reconceptualizes the syntagmatic connotations of home-less-ness as a destabilized and uncentered site predicated on subjectivities of loss, longing, and desire.20

INDENTURE AND WOUNDING

In Cane Portraiture, subjectivities of loss, longing, and desire speak to the presence of trauma among indentured labourers and their descendents. Dominick LaCapra describes historical trauma as limited in scope and scale while emphasizing that “not everyone is subject to it or entitled to the subject position associated with it”.21 However, the categories of “everyday” trauma slip into “historical trauma” when they express a “cumulative wounding across generations”.22 Causal studies into the presence of intergenerational trauma are not new and have been theorized by scholars including Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart since the 1980s. Brave Heart’s research into the historical and intergenerational trauma of the Lakota help to elucidate the

52 \ implicate participants in the personal and collective histories of pain, unresolved grief, and other forms of psychological colonialism. And it is ultimately successful because it constructs suffering that affect Indigenous communities since Contact.23 a poetic gesture of interpersonal dialogue and exchange while In her essay, “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical Trauma of enacting political resistance. By staging an indexical trace of the Lakota,” she locates three principle categories that those the Caribbean, which operates as both a wellspring of suffering suffering from historical trauma share: and a source of strength, Gosine invokes cultural memory as a mode of self-discovery. Gosine’s work is not meant to be a cure (a) transposition24 where one lives simultaneously in the but rather to bear the wound of this history, which exists at both past and the present with the ancestral suffering as the main a personal and collective precipice throughout the Caribbean diaspora. the dead25 so that one feels psychically (emotionally and Be it sugar cane or sugar candy, for Gosine and Gonzalez- psychologically) dead and feels unworthy of living, and (c) Torres, home is not merely a concept but an embodiment of a person or place that is shared with others. life.26 Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D., is the Curator and Head of Collections of Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario, What is remarkable about Brave Heart’s conclusions is how Canada. He is also the literary editor of First American Art closely they apply to Gosine’s own experiences. For Gosine, Magazine and the Canadian section editor of the Art Market colonization of the Caribbean and its resulting historical trauma Dictionary. is inscribed within the bodies and desires of descendents of indentured labourers:

I’m arguing that our desires are not simple and pure, but complicated; that they are socialized not just in our lifetimes, but through preceding generations; and that they will be rendered through the traumatic and multifaceted experience of indentureship, and the way in which [indentureship] in service of others. The names we are called in Trinidad and Guyana – ‘,’ ‘East Indians’ – are the ultimate reminder of all this.27

Historically, in the eyes of colonial perpetrators, dehumanization of individuals and groups has been a way to justify and sustain horrendous actions such as physical segregation, cultural destruction, and assimilationist policies. Treatment towards “coolies” is certainly no different. Faced with improper living conditions, malnutrition, disease, physical and verbal abuse, overwork, among many other sufferings, indentured labour legally replaced the system of slavery without improving upon its exploitative working and social conditions. In Gosine’s words, those directly affected of industry and valued as capital. The burden of categorizing descendents of indenture as Other—as a category of pure many, if not all, colonial subjects. Historical trauma is but one of its aftereffects. For participants affected by indentureship and the “coolie odyssey,” the cane sugar photograph renders through personal and/or collective narratives that converge upon historical trauma. The aesthetic strategies proposed by Gosine aid in the construction of memory, foster a sense of community, and help keep cultural memory alive.28 Gosine’s Cane Portraiture reconceptualizes “home” as a perpetually-negotiated absent present which unfolds in a vector of relational encounters. By deconstructing historical narratives and representations surrounding Caribbean indenture, Gosine has developed an oppositional critique to present-day interactions with European colonialism. The consequences of ancestral and personal migrations from India to the Caribbean to Canada are here inscribed as a category of transgenerational trauma that speaks to the violence of physical displacement, dehumanization, and cultural loss. The photograph of sugar cane in the backdrop of his performance is a code that enacts a strategy of remembrance and collective mourning. The image works to

/ 53 54 \ Image Credits: Indian Labour Diaspora (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 13. Andil Gosine, Cane Portraiture: The Descendants, 2016, digital 5. Claudette Lauzon, “What the Body Remembers: Rebecca print, 10 x 15.25 cm (distributed at performance) or 30.5 x 45.75 Belmore’s Memorial to Missing Women,” Precarious Visuality: cm (for exhibition). Portrait subjects: pg. 1: Ramabai Espinet, Pg. , eds. 2: Richard Fung, Roshini Kempadoo, Pg. 3: Wendy Nanan, Pg. 4: Oliver Asselin, Johanne Lamoureux, and Christine Ross (Montreal Sharlene Khan, Pg. 5: Joy Mahabir. and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 157. 6. Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics Works Cited: edition (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998), 113. Barthes, Roland. 1982. 7. Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang. Discontents,” Artforum (February 2006), 183. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York and 8. J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography London: Routledge. from Its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Bishop, Claire. 2004. “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.” 2005), 126. October 110 (Fall): 51-79. 9. For more information on the maltreatment of indentured labourers ---. 2006. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents.” during transport to the Carribean, see, for example: Michael Mann, Artforum (February): 178-183. South Asia’s Modern History: Thematic Perspectives (New York and Blocker, Jane M. 2009. Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of London: Routledge, 2014). Testimony. London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 10. Radical Culture Research Collective, “A Very Short Bourriaud, Nicolas. 1998. Relational Aesthetics. First English- Critique of Relational Aesthetics,” Transform.eipcp.net (2007): language edition. Dijon: Les presses du réel. http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894/print.html Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse. 2003. “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying (accessed August 13, 2019). the Historical Trauma of the Lakota.” Tulane Studies in Social 11. For example, see: Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Welfare 21(2): 245-266. Aesthetics,” October 110 (Fall 2004): 51-79. Carabott, Philip, Yannis Hamilakis and Eleni Papargyriou et. al. 12. Roland Barthes, , 2014. Camera Graeca: Photographs, Narratives, Materialities. Eds. trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 91. Philip Carabott, Yannis Hamilakis and Eleni Papargyriou. London: 13. Philip Carabott, Yannis Hamilakis and Eleni Papargyriou et. Ashgate. al., Camera Graeca: Photographs, Narratives, Materialities, eds. Carter, Marina and Khal Torabully. 2002. Coolitude: An Anthology Philip Carabott, Yannis Hamilakis and Eleni Papargyriou (London: of Indian Labour Diaspora. London: Anthem Press. Ashgate, 2014), 10. Hall, Stuart. 1990. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity, 14. Kyo Maclear, Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: the Art of Witness (Albany: State University of New York Press, Lawrence and Wishart. 1998), 21. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. 15. Jane M. Blocker, Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Testimony (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Lauzon, Claudette. 2008. “What the Body Remembers: Rebecca 2009), 44. Belmore’s Memorial to Missing Women.” Precarious Visuality: New 16. Blocker, Seeing Witness, 44, my emphasis. Eds. Oliver 17. Jaret Vadera, “The Bittersweet Performance of Histories,” ARC Asselin, Johanne Lamoureux, and Christine Ross. Montreal and Magazine 8 (2014): 91, my emphasis. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 18. Lauzon, “What the Body Remembers: Rebecca Belmore’s Maclear, Kyo. 1998. Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Memorial to Missing the Art of Witness. Albany: State University of New York Press. Women,” 173. Mann, Michael. 2014. South Asia’s Modern History: Thematic 19. Andil Gosine quoted in Vadera, “The Bittersweet Performance Perspectives. New York and London: Routledge. of Histories,” 91. Michaels, Kari. 2010. “Historical Trauma and Microaggressions: A 20. See, for example: Homi K. Bhabba, The Location of Culture Framework for Culturally-Based Practice.” University of Minnesota (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). Extension Children, Youth & Family Consortium (October). 21. Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: http://www.extension.umn.edu/family/cyfc/our-programs/ereview/ Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 78. docs/cmhereviewOct10.pdf (accessed December 14, 2017). 22. LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 77-78; Maria Yellow Miller, Nancy, K. 2002. But Enough About Me: Why We Read Horse Brave Heart, “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical Trauma Other People’s Lives. New York: Columbia University Press. of the Lakota,” Tulane Studies in Social Welfare 21-2 (2003): 246. Radical Culture Research Collective. 2007. “A Very Short 23. Kari Michaels, “Historical Trauma and Microaggressions: A Critique of Relational Aesthetics.” Transform.eipcp.net Framework for Culturally-Based Practice,” University of Minnesota http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894/print.html Extension Children, Youth & Family Consortium (October 2010), (accessed December 9, 2017). http://www.extension.umn.edu/family/cyfc/our-programs/ereview/ Vadera, Jaret. 2014. “The Bittersweet Performance of Histories.” docs/cmhereviewOct10.pdf (accessed December 14, 2015). ARC Magazine 8(1): 90-93. 24. J. S. Kestenberg quoted in “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical Trauma of the Lakota,” 247. Notes: 25. R. J. Lifton quoted in “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical 1. Ananda Devi, Le Voile de Draupadi, my translation (Paris: Editions Trauma of the Lakota,” 247. L’Harmattan, 1993), 47. 26. E. Fogelman quoted in “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical 2. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Identity, Community, Trauma of the Lakota,” 247. Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence 27. Andil Gosine quoted in Jaret Vadera, “The Bittersweet and Wishart, 1990), 232-233. Performance of Histories,” 91. 28. Nancy K. Miller, But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other Asia. People’s Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 7. 4. Marina Carter and Khal Torabully, Coolitude: An Anthology of

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