Oceana James, For Gowie the Deceitful Fellow (Performance), 2016, photo: Sarene Brumant
Monday, 12 June 2017, 7 pm
Invisible Heritage: Transfer 2017
Artist Talk in English with Monica Marin, Johanna Bermúdez-Ruiz and Gerville R. Larsen
Hosted at the foyer, Kunsthaus Hamburg
The artist talk will take place in the context of the SANKOFA – ALTONA IN THE CARIBBEAN program. 2017 marks the centennial of the sale of the Danish Virgin Islands to the USA. The program takes this „Transfer Day“ as an opportunity to debate about the notorious involvement of Danish-Altona in the transatlantic trade with enslaved people from Westafrica to the Caribbean. The cultural program welcomes experts from the US Virgin Islands, the USA, Denmark, Trinidad, Ghana, and Hamburg and is curated by Hannimari Jokinen. She lives and works as a visual artist and curator in Hamburg and is a member of the Work Group HAMBURG POSTKOLONIAL.
In dialog with the artists from St. Croix/US Virgin islands, Johanna Bermúdez-Ruiz and Gerville R. Larsen, the curator and artist Marin will talk about her concept for the exhibition Invisible Heritage: Transfer 2017, presented this February in St. Croix and now shown in Copenhagen. The exhibition addresses the ways in which the Caribbean vernacular culture reveals the marginalized narratives in the colonial history of the Virgin Islands. The Danish perspective of the colonial narrative has been the primary focus, thereby creating blind spots that conceal the rich African Caribbean cultural contributions. Virgin Islands Folk Arts, passed down from generations, have helped to tell a fuller story.
Through their “re-visions” the artists provoke questions: How can these new approaches be utilized to operate from the inside? How can the Virgin Islanders manifest their own destinies, reframe their past, and be in control of their future development? And, how can a critical perspective of Transfer be used to Transform?
Monica Marin
a curator, artist, and educator from the US Virgin Islands. Studied Art History, Theory and Criticism and graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work and research addresses the structural history of colonialism and the ways in which coloniality is manifested today through tourism, environmental racism, and the privatization of public land. Current projects examine the missing African-Caribbean art history in the archive, and vernacular cultural expressions as a space of resistance, including Invisible Heritage community arts project, and Take 5 and Migrating Histories, performance festivals with Carla Acevedo-Yates. Marin works for the Virgin Islands Government on activating restoration projects through arts & culture, and as an independent curator helps to manage the Caribbean Museum Center for Arts artist in residency program and many of their exhibitions.
Johanna Bermúdez-Ruiz
an award winning filmmaker and a native of St. Croix/US Virgin Islands. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in filmmaking from Antioch College, Ohio/USA. Johanna has gained national and international acclaim and recognition for her distinguished films, documentaries, and music videos.
www.canebayfilms.com/projects
www.canebayfilms.com/portfolio_page/sugar-pathways
Gerville Rene Larsen
architect and artist, a multi-generational Crucian from the island of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. He has received awards in both disciplines and promotes preservation/conservation of the rich cultural resources of the Virgin Islands. He is an abstract and figure painter with recent work that readdresses the narrative of who built and shaped our colonial past and the relevance between person and place. He has a B.Arch from Cornell University, Ithaca/USA.
www.tallerlarjas.co/gallery-art-collections.html
Further events on:
www.sankofa-altona-vi.de