December 2008
Wrestling with struggles within the confines and legacies of Black self-hatred, gay self-hatred, Black-ness, Jamaican-ness, African-ness, sexuality, class and religion. With influences from the Rastafarian-Garvey movement and a quest to achieve forgiveness and heal self and family.
There are three themes that my work circumnavigates:
A. "The legacy of degradation" A revelation of the continuation of slavery through ephemera and historical documents in the form of collage. Revealing architectural components of Black servitude, free labor and its legacies via modern industrialized examples: the prison system, factories, hospitals, and domestics.
B. Playing with the slogan I have created The Nigger the Winner, “Niggah deh Winnah” A Pan-African play on words, Using these words in a broken Jamaican dialect [patois] as a form of aspiration and passive protest of the colonizers language while the use of the Garvey construct Red for the blood, Black for the people and Green for the land they stole. This is presented in text and collage.
C. The series “Who is most masculine?” interrogates and comments on masculine constructs, identities and legacies of hatred by the display of power and control within the domestics, tourist trade, industrialization, cultural attire, gender policing within the Afro-Caribbean culture and the gay balls in the United States via dvd. paintings and Installations.
Lawrence Graham-Brown
(NIGGAH DEH WINNAH)
