Strength and Humor in El Museo del Barrio’s Caribbean Crossroads

This six-month exhibition is supplemented with a number of exploratory programs, one of which is a three-day symposium that opened at El Museo del Barrio with a reenactment of Derek Walcott’s play Dream on Monkey Mountain.

Actor Andre de Shields offers a thrilling performance as the character Makak—accompanied by three drummers who add theatrical percussion, he recounts a humorously delivered tale of an oppressed “crazy” slave facing issues of race, identity and rootlessness. This introduction is fitting, as both the ferocity of, and humor in, his delivery are characteristics at the heart of the exhibition that graces the adjacent rooms of El Museo Del Barrio.

Spanning 200 years of visual culture and including the perspective of artists from the colonies as well as the Caribbean Diaspora, the exhibition covers a lot of ground. As a result, the exhibition is hung salon-style to include multidisciplinary work centered on two themes, “Counterpoints” and “Patriot Acts”. Divided in two halves, the first, “Counterpoints”, is a solemn investigation of Caribbean plantation systems and industries and features work that combines visual art and curiosities. A Cuban cigar box transformed into a music box by John Erwin accompanies a snuffbox by Claude Hencourt and a 19th century pipe rifle by an unknown African Chokwe artist, in two large glass curiosity cabinets. A second room offers similar playful juxtapositions as a circa 1804 oil portrait of Alexander Hamilton by American painter John Trumbell converses with an eagle-crested black resin crown standing atop a two-tiered Tiffany box pedestal, by New York-based contemporary artist Reinaldo Sanguino. Together these works explore the impact of leadership, politics and respective value systems then and now.

This juxtaposition of old and new is also carried through the rooms of “Patriot Acts” that explores identities in flux as well as those classified as “indigenous” and entrenched in heritage. A series of photographs by Leo Matiz bridges these two classifications offering black and white snapshots of people doing “everyday life” activities taken whilst on his journeys through the Colombian Caribbean. The images are sweetly nostalgic in their banality yet appear questioning in their documentation of daily activities that reveal the social and cultural fabric of this region.

The final room harkens back to the reenactment of Derek Walcott’s play intertwining pointedness with comedy. Ernest Breleur’s Remains of Marilyn is a row of black boxes inside, which are reconstructed ritual pendant masks made entirely from X-rays that have been cut up, assembled and backlit by a uniformly changing neon light. On each box floor are color-copies of Andy Warhol’s more lively yet equally worshipped icon Marilyn that share the same neon color range as the changing light. Macabre in its reference to death it also appears alive as the ever-evolving light peters over the surface of the images. A few feet away, a small “stool” covered in red velvet exudes luxury. However, its shape appears uncanny as, what looks like an arching female form, is also a functioning back stretcher. Titled Contortionist, 2005 by Nicaraguan artist Patricia Belli, the stool is an absurd retake on plush antique furniture combining pastime with a fresh conceptual sensibility. The overt use of metaphor lends these works earnestness similar to that seen in the smattering of ‘intuitive’ works throughout “Patriot Act”—and it seems that the whimsical nature of the work is unifying, showing generations of artists exploring ideas with humor and sincerity.

On exit, a small video screen on a sidewall sums up the exhibition experience. “Mi to Bai y Bin Bek I/ I’m leaving and Coming Back” by Dutch artist Rob ter Haar portrays a ghostly outline of a cruise ship exiting port. Distorted by its bright lights, the image radiates flashing colors bathing the screen in neon and offering the viewer a hypnotic experience akin to that of staring in to a disco light. The image is seductive in its kaleidoscope of color and the notion of a radiating cruise ship is humorous, however behind this seduction is the realization that ter Haar is illuminating the devastating impact that the cruise ship industry has had on the environment in the Caribbean—both physically and culturally. As the title of ter Haar’s work suggests, “Caribbean Crossroads of the World” is part of a larger and expansive conversation that, despite being a passage forward in its inclusive approach, is also one that will always rely—and willingly so—on looking back.