Substantiation of the Spiritual: The Found Objects of Grace Williams

January 31, 2022 by Mariamma Kambon

Hers is an art practice built out of memory embedded deep within her. She transforms Harlem’s residuum – everything from discarded toys and furniture to the guts of renovated buildings – into stirring, tactile chronicles of the events and personalities that have marked her life.

Categories: Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: African Diaspora, altars, artifacts, artist, Barack Obama, Betty Shabazz, Bob Macbeth, Caribbean Diaspora, Ed Bullins, flags, found objects, Grace Williams, Harlem, immigrant, Jamaica, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Mariamma Kambon, mosaics, New York, Ntozake Shange, photography, recycling, Sculpture, Trinidad and Tobago, vessels

THERE (Yankee) – A curatorial project

May 24, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

To stand in front of one of the photographs made by emerging photographer, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, is to stand at the point where documentary and art collide. In line with the wave of photographers creating imagery from positions of marginality, Phyars-Burgess has made use of the technology of photography as a tool for self-reflexivity and self-redefinition. She has examined aspects of contemporary Trinidadian life from the vantage point of a first-generation American grounded in the culture of this distant, yet familiar […]

Categories: Exhibition, Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, back and white, Bard College, brooklyn, caribbean, Caribbean Diaspora, Cornell MFA, cornell university, documentary, En Foco, Exhibition, family, fine art, Harlem, ICP, identity, immigrant, International Center of Photography, Mariamma Kambon, migration, Mink Building, New York, Pennsylvania, photographer, photography, photojournalism, Sasha Phyars-Burgess, SoHarlem, transnational West Indian family, Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidadian, west indian, yankee

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks and Astounding Commodification

June 15, 2015 by Mariamma Kambon

African-American, born to African-descended, Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean immigrant parents, Jean-Michel Basquiat was the embodiment of modernity. He is the quintessential romanticized figure of the agonized artist, who died too young. He was prolific during his brief and meteoric career, and remains an invaluable artworld commodity decades after his tragic passing. Only half joking, I describe the trip from Harlem to Brooklyn as “the Hajj.” It consists of trains that are almost guaranteed to be delayed and messy, ever-mutating transfer […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: art, Basquiat, Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, Brooklyn Museum, caribbean, commodification, immigrant, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mariamma Kambon, modernity, painting, photography

Shaking Paper

July 18, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

The story “Asha Means Life”, told in boxes made of wooden photographs, was on display in the Olive Tjaden Gallery at Cornell University between October 15-26, 2012, in the group show entitled “Shaking Paper”.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: arts, Asha Darbeau, Asha Means Life, caribbean, cornell university, dance, dream, Exhibition, family, immigrant, Ithaca, miami, milled photograph, motherhood, New York, photography, shaking paper, show, single parent, wooden boxes, wooden photograph

Asha Means Life: An Introduction

June 1, 2012 by Mariamma Kambon

In late summer 2011, I overnighted with Asha and her family while in transit to work on another project. I began snapping as Asha created pockets of order in the chaos that ensued the night-before-the-first-day-of-school. Weeks later, I realized there was an emotional charge to the images. Still nascent, the project “Asha Means Life” came into being with that moment. It features my mother’s namesake – a young mother herself, an artist and a Caribbean immigrant – and the visual […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Asha, caribbean, children, dreadlocks, family, identity, immigrant, miami, motherhood, photography, rasta, Trinidad and Tobago