Trécha Gay Jheneall, Not of Continent, (Embroidered map of the Caribbean). Aging raw cotton, needles, embroidery thread, acrylic paint on canvas. 24"x 36". 2020.
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 2022, 6-9pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Sundays, 12-7pm
Closing Reception: Sunday, May 8, 2022, 6-9pm
RITUALS OF BELONGING
Grounded in notions of belonging, nativity and migration, the relationship between the corporeal and the land is amplified in this work. This creative process considers the movement, memories, and homemaking of peoples of the afro-Caribbean region (migrant and remaining native) activated through various processes of affinity, inclusive of various rituals and labor of survival and living; foodways and material culture, care-packaging, burial rites, and ancestral veneration.
Visual and material artifacts such as calling cards, barrels, family photographs, manipulation of sugar cane’s likeness, and aging raw cotton are used in iteration throughout. To nostalgically recall the cultural exchanges in 90s Jamaican era, auditory elements such as recordings of long-distance telephone conversations, stereo speakers and field recordings from the Jamaican soundscape are employed. Montages from classic Jamaican films, interviews with community members of Ghanaian and Jamaican nationality, personal documentation and performances are effective at evoking ideas about identity, cultural resemblances, and spiritual cohesivity.
At its nucleus, Rituals of Belonging is a witnessing of perpetuity; process, imagination and inventiveness that unifies Afro-Jamaican Peoples to their antecedents in Ghana, West Africa.
Trécha Gay Jheneall, Still from the film, Wata-Barrel-Soun ', 2021.
Trécha Gay Jheneall, Still from the film, Wata-Barrel-Soun ', 2021.