3 Caribbean Artists Igniting New York’s Performance Art Scene

With an English-speaking Caribbean population of well over two million, according to a census carried out by the Centre for Migration Studies of New York in 1980, New York can be considered the largest Caribbean city in the world – in fact, larger than any city in the Caribbean. Politically fraught and investigative, it is difficult, and perhaps futile, to try and classify the works of Caribbean artists Tania Bruguera, Allora & Calzadilla, and Christie Neptune. With roots in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guyana respectively, the mentioned artists are currently either based or work frequently in New York. Through diverse visual outputs, their practices challenge assumptions of performance and performativity, bringing to the foreground issues faced by their close communities as well as the wider cultural diaspora.

 

Tania Bruguera 

Tania Bruguera is a Cuban installation and performance artist, who lives and works between New York and Havana. A politically motivated performance artist, she explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the social effects of political and economic power. By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as many individuals so that the full realisation of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it. She expands the definition and range of performance art, sometimes performing solo but more often staging participatory events and interactions that build on her own observations, experiences, and interpretations of repression and control.

 

Allora & Calzadilla

The United States’ representatives for the 54th Venice Biennale, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Their works often interrogate the economic, cultural, and political markers that differentiate one area of land from another, and the processes of colonisation and gentrification that come to define its changing status. Since the beginning of their collaborative career in 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have worked in a variety of media to produce a body of work spanning sculpture, photography, performance art, sound and video, frequently exhibiting in New York. Through a complex research-oriented practice, Allora & Calzadilla critically address the intersections and complicities between the cultural, the historical and the geopolitical.

 

Christie Neptune

Brooklyn native Christie Neptune is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, photography, mixed media and performance arts. Neptune investigates how constructs of race, gender, and class limit the personal experiences of historically stigmatised individuals. Last year, the artist presented work at New York’s Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute alongside a roster of inter-generational emerging and established artists of Guyanese heritage. Critically aware of both self and subjectivity, Neptune illuminates the personal and emotional aftermath of a society that disregards and delegitimatises those that endure the brunt of historically upheld supremacies.

 

Feature image: Allora & Calzadilla, Hope Hippo, 2005 (via Aspen Art Museum)