Here in Jamaica not everyone lost a roof in the storm; but we all lost the ground beneath our feet. Not one of us – in the west or in the east – was spared the dark, looming feeling of uncertainty, of not knowing what tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow will bring for our little island on the front line of the climate crisis.
In her newest series, Jamaican visual artist Roberta Stoddart takes on the discomforting task of inviting viewers into the Caribbean home-space to interrogate and disrupt the practice of incest, a reality we shudder to face and stammer to speak of in the Caribbean. Over six oil paintings, none larger than 20 x 15 inches, Stoddart tells the story of a Caribbean family attempting to hide wounds of incest inflicted within the home.
Roberta Stoddart’s richly complex oil paintings showcased in The Bertha Room, prove that it is dark under the metaphoric flotsam of Wide Sargasso Sea, darker still under the shade of the palm tree’s symbolism, and perhaps darkest of all where racial, familial, patriarchal, and post-colonial trauma festers muted and unseen.
ISIS SEMAJ-HALL / RIDDIM WRITER
Dub is what happens when time collapses. But it is not the collapse of all time, just the collapse of their time. Dub is the collapse of their time and the rise of fi wi time. Do you follow me? Or do you prefer to see where I’m going?
As I reflect on race and racism the Caribbean, as I think about the politics of hate in the Caribbean, and as I question decolonial thinking in this region, I cannot help but think of Rodney.
An essay on gender politics in the Caribbean and how its slowly but surely changing. By Isis Semaj-Hall.
ISIS SEMAJ-HALL On the face of it, pree is not a Caribbean word. Pree is a Jamaican word. Press...
