Blood at the Root: Activism in Art

May 30, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

Nooses were hanging like vines. Roots penetrated deeply into blood soaked soil. And then there was a fight.   Blood at the Root is a small-scale production. The cast numbers six. It was performed at the National Black Theatre, which has a seating capacity of less than two hundred. The set is comprised of a flat backdrop and six chairs in constant rotation. But there is nothing small-scale about the impact of this play. Blood at the Root forces the […]

Categories: Performance, Uncategorized • Tags: Allison Jaye, awareness, Black Lives Matter, Blood at the Root, Brandon Carter, change, Christian Thompson, Civil rights, division, Dominique Morisseau, empathy, Eric Garner, Hi-Arts, hip hop dance, installation, Jena 6, Kenzie Ross, labels, Louisiana, lynching, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, National Black Theatre, New York, Nooses, Penn State Centre Stage, photography, play, prejudice, production, protest, racism, resistance, rules, Sade Lythcott, stage set, Steven Broadnax, Stori Ayers, strange fruit, tolerance, Trayvon Martin, Tyler Reilly

David Hammons/ Obeah Man

March 23, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

The art of David Hammons usually beckons to me from wherever it is perched within a group show. How can someone who uses such a myriad of methods and media have a voice so distinct amid the ambitious cacophony of contemporary art? It is the obeah in the thing – the spirit of the miraculous and the rebellious. It is the profundity revealed in the quotidian that allows his voice to rise above the rest. Obeah is black magic some […]

Categories: Exhibition, Uncategorized • Tags: african amerian, African American, african art, artist, bird, black magic, boukman, champ, David Hammons, dreadlocks, Exhibition, fine art, five decades, fur coat, Harlem, human hair, installation, Kongo, mal yeux, malcolm x blvd, maljo, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, mau mau, mnuchin gallery, New York, nkisi, Obeah, obeah man, okomfo anokye, orange is the new black, photography, power figure, rebellion, resistance, slavery, snowball, standing room only, tribal art, Trinidad and Tobago, visual arts

Chiharu Shiota – Keys in Venice and New York

March 5, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

Encountering Chiharu Shiota’s work at the Venice Biennale 2015 was indeed like stumbling upon a familiar tongue in a foreign land. Yet the lingua had been extrapolated into such sublime poetry that it was rendered almost completely new to me. In late 2013 I became aware of mass incarceration, a system of control and suppression unique to the United States, not only in its stupendous volume but in its targeting of the historically disenfranchised and underprivileged segments of the society. […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: A Key in the Hand, artist, Biennale 2015, caribbean, Chiharu Shiota, Exhibition, fine art, installation, italy, Japan, Japan Pavilion, Japanese artist, keys, loss, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, memories, memory, New York, photography, Piers 42/44, red yarn, resistance, State of Being, The Armory, The Armory Show 2016, Trinidad and Tobago, venice, Venice Biennale, Venizia, wooden boat

The Personal and the Political by Attillah Springer

May 24, 2015 by Mariamma Kambon

    Mariamma Kambon takes delicate fragments to create brutal truths in her work, exploring in fine detail ideas of social justice, race and class, civil rights, and genetic memory and how these problems find specific manifestations within the prison industrial system. “Altars of Poverty” problematizes several notions of being and belonging. It claims a vocabulary for the denial of humanity. It visually describes a set of issues that we have not yet found a language for. And through her art, Kambon […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: altars of poverty, art and politics, Attillah Springer, caribbean, christianity and capitalism, installation, Mariamma Kambon, photography, postcolonial, salt, Trinidad and Tobago, wax

“Omen” featured in group show, EXPLICIT PROTOCOL

November 27, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

The piece, “Omen/ He Dances in the Courtyard of the Impertinent” was on display in Tjaden Gallery, Ithaca, NY from October 21 to November 1, 2013, in the group show “Explicit Protocol” Decades ago, “justice” was already an ambiguous term when applied to the carceral system of the United States, with its overt and inherent biases of class and particularly of race. In 1967, in a letter to his father, from solitary confinement, George Jackson had a clear concept of […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: abolition, Anarchist Black Cross, Angela Davis, Betye Saar, cornell university, Exhibition, explicit protocol, George Jackson, he dances in the courtyard of the impertinent, history, installation, James Baldwin, Jericho Movement, liberation theology, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Mecke Nagel, omen, Paget Henry, politicized cosmologies, politicized theology, prison, prison abolition, prison industrial complex, rebellion, resistance, shango, slavery

Omen/ He Dances in the Courtyard of the Impertinent

November 26, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Water by the side of fire at the center of the sky A strange thing, on the road to Teji Oku He strikes a stone in the forest, stone bleeds blood He carries a heavy stone upon his head without a cushion. Shango splits the wall with his falling thunderbolt. He makes a detour in telegraphic wire Leopard of the flaming eyes Lord who wears the sawtooth – bordered cloth of returning ancestors (egun) Storm on the edge of a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: abolition, african culture, african retention, caribbean, cornell university, Exhibition, he dances in the courtyard of the impertinent, installation, justice, liberation theology, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, omen, orisha, politicized theology, prison industrial complex, rebellion, resistance, shango, slavery, survival

strange (& bitter) crop: giving visibility to the invisible

September 12, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Mariamma Kambon’s work traces the tumultuous struggles for power and self-actualization that have existed since historic encounters imposed the definition of race onto humanity, and with it, the racialization of morality, beauty and endemic worth. She uses photography and multi-media installation to decode the connections between our present reality and the past that has shaped it. “strange (& bitter) crop” is a sparse and impersonal visualization of the hot and contentious harvest of flesh, blood, bone and brain matter that […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: acrylic, ARC magazine, cornell university, Exhibition, experimental gallery, inmates, installation, invisibility, Ithaca, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, multi media, plastic, strange (& bitter) crop, strange and bitter crop, strange fruit

strange (& bitter) crop

September 6, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Solo show, September 9 -13, 2013. Experimental Gallery, Olive Tjaden Hall, Ithaca, NY. Opening Reception: September 9, 2013. 5-8pm.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: acrylic, Exhibition, installation, invisible, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, multi media, plastic, prison, prison industrial complex, strange (& bitter) crop, strange and bitter crop, strange fruit

A Possibility – multimedia installation

August 27, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

 A Possibility[i] [audio http://f.cl.ly/items/2d2S1G2L2p2q2C2O3e3o/SF21-NOF-compilation.mp3] After my visit to a state prison in North Carolina, the hollow, trapped eyes of the men in worn out prison uniforms stayed with me along with the miles and miles of chain-link fence, the layers of enclosure that separated them from the rest of life. I could have drowned in the bleakness of their interminable sentences and the withering boredom of their days had I not been able to resurrect a semblance of hope for a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: a possibility, African Diaspora, audio installation, chain link, correctional institution, emancipation, Exhibition, Frederick Douglass, freedom, Gary Snyder Project Space, group show, Harriet Tubman, hope, incarceration, installation, Kongo, liberty, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Narratives of Freedom, Nat Turner, nkisi sarabanda, ogun, parabolic speaker, prison, rebellion, resistance, sarabanda, Seth Concklin, slavery, syncretism, syncretist, Yoruba