The Son of the Prophet Journeys to the Land of the Believers

April 22, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

The earliest image of my family was captured with Marcus Garvey’s portrait occupying the position typically reserved for White Jesus in the West Indian home.   “Children, children! Children, children! Humble yourself and be calm, one day somehow You’ll remember him, you will No one remember old Marcus Garvey No one remember old Marcus Garvey Garvey’s old, yet young Garvey’s old, yet young” – Old Marcus Garvey, Burning Spear   “My trod was in the livity and order. I honored […]

Categories: Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: African Diaspora, African Liberation, black god, Black Power, Bob Marley, breadfruit trees, Burning Spear, caribbean, Clyde Noel, colonialism, dreadlocks, Ethiopia, family, family portrait, flags, food independence, Haile Selassie, Harris Promenade, In the Lion's Den, Jamaica, Julius Garvey, Junior Bisnath, luz de tu sonrisa, luzdetusonrisa, Marcus Garvey, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Mariamma Kambon, New York, photography, postcolonial, prophet, Ras Daniel, rasta, Rastafari, Rastafarian, red black and green, resistance, San Fernando, Steel Pulse, Trini Levi, Trinidad and Tobago, twelve tribes, Twelve Tribes of Israel, white jesus, Worth his weight in gold

Whosestory? The Privilege of Definition After the Colonial Encounter

March 28, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

  An indigenous elder is confronted with a young, European explorer on a mission to find a powerful, legendary plant (yakruna) in the Amazon forest. Probing questions from the visitor plummet the elder into grief. By nightfall he is weeping for the failure of his memory. He knows that he has arrived at the most tragic state in which a human being can exist. He is without time, without the knowledge and stories of his people. He is a chullachaqui, […]

Categories: Exhibition, Film, Lecture, Uncategorized • Tags: african art, alternative worldview, amazon, art, Artists on Artworks, bias, black and white, chullachaqui, Ciro Guerra, colonialism, David Museum, El Abrazo de la Serpiente, Film, fine art, Hank Willis Thomas, independent film, indigenous, Kongo, Mariamma Kambon, memory, metropolitan museum of art, museum, New York, photography, power figure, privilege, the Met, Trinidad and Tobago, violence, whosestory, yakruna

Lorna Goodison – Recovering the Lost through the Imagination

March 13, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

It was a treat to attend the talk entitled On the Caribbean Imaginary by Lorna Goodison. The lecture was a part of the New York University Institute of African American Affairs Spring 2016 Lecture Series and coincided with International Women’s Day. Goodison’s poetry has been a staple of the West Indian high school experience. Her words delighted me in and out of the classroom. Her poem Guinea Woman featured in the textbook of my school days. A quick perusal of […]

Categories: Lecture, Uncategorized • Tags: Abeokuta, African Diaspora, african retention, caribbean, colonialism, Guinea Woman, home, I am becoming my mother, Ilesa, imagination, Institute of African American Affairs, International Women's Day, Jamaica, Jamaican, Lecture, Lecture Series, Lorna Goodison, Mariamma Kambon, memory, New York, NYU, poem, poet, poetry, postcolonial, The Caribbean Imaginary, Toni Morrison, Trinidad and Tobago, Wole Soyinka

Altars of Poverty

June 14, 2015 by Mariamma Kambon

Altars of Poverty, my thesis show, grew out of my interest in a particular detail that I uncovered while researching the Black Power Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. The movement seemed to have been transformed in scale and importance at the specific moment when the then small group of protesters – consisting mainly of university students and public transportation workers – entered a Roman Catholic cathedral in the heart of the nation’s capital. This famous cathedral was devoted to the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: 1970, altars of poverty, Black Power, capitalism, catholic, church, colonialism, cornell university, death penalty, death row, Ithaca, Mariamma Kambon, martin carter, mass incarceration, MFA Thesis, New York, postcolonial, salt, sugar, Thesis, Tjaden Gallery, Trinidad and Tobago, white divinity

Artist Statement and triptych – Castle of My Skin

March 14, 2011 by Mariamma Kambon

“Castle of my skin” is an abbreviation of the title of a book by a renowned Caribbean author – an autobiographical story of the coming of age of a young man of African descent in a British West Indian Colony. I selected this title based on my own exploration of growing up in a post-Independence, former British colony in the West Indies, tracing the path of an earlier generation who were born into colonialism. I seek to understand the split […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: alternative processes, blue van dyke, caribbean, colonialism, cyanotype, history, photography, slavery, van dyke brown