BrowseArt and religion in the Caribbean: inventing identity | Gerardo Mosquera
Abstract
In this inter-ethnic epoch of the late second millennium, identity appears as an active construction in opposition to essentialism and monocultures. Two artists, André Pierre of Haiti and Everald Brown of Jamaica, embody this active creation process and participate in the transformation of the Western concept of art. Officiants of syncretic religions, voodoo for the former and Rastafarianism for the latter, they each develop an artistic practice imbued with a personal mystical experience which is neither ritual art endowed with religious functions nor independent activity centred on aesthetics. Their art is a new creation, free from tradition and founder of a new identity.
Gerardo Mosquera
Gerardo Mosquera (b. La Havana 1945) is an independent curator, art critic and historian and writer of Cuban origin.He was one of the organisers of the first Havana Biennialin 1984 and headed the research department of the Wifredo Lam Centre until his resignation in 1989.
Since then, his business has been mainly international: he has travelled, given lectures and organised exhibitions in more than 70 countries.
Mosquerawas also assistant curator at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art for fifteen years, from 1995 to 2009. Since 1995, he has been an advisor at the Rijksakademie van BeeldendeKusten in Amsterdam
His publications on art and art theory are innumerable. He is the author of more than six hundred articles, reviews and essays, published in magazines such as Aperture, Art in America, Art&Text, Art Criticism, Art Journal, Art Nexus, Atlántica, Cahiers, Casa de las Américas, ArtForum, Kuntsforum, La JornadaSemanal, Lápiz, Neue BildendeKunst, Oxford Art Journal, Parkett, Pluriel, Poliester and Third Text. To name just a few of his best-known publications, Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (Cambridge, MA and London: INIVA and The MIT Press, 1995) Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture (Cambridge, MA and New York: The MIT Press and New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004).
Mosquerawas artistic director of PHotoEspaña, Madrid (2011-2013), and chief curator of the 4th Poly/Graphic San Juan Triennial, (2015-2016).
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