The Grenada Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo http://en.expo2010.cn/c/en_gj_tpl_235.htm is the next stop for my Chantuelle series.
These images are part of my Chantuelle series, articulating my response to the socially sanctioned slow and painful death of our indigenous artform, the ShortKnee, now commonly denigrated to sideshow, instead of esteemed holder of knowledge.
Bloody village rivalries on either side of the Atlantic boiled down to produce perhaps the most compelling iconic image of Grenada’s annual masquerade, the ShortKnee. Traced back to West African spoken word traditions, these oral libraries or chantuelles in their song structure, descended from work songs brought by plantation slaves, bear witness to generations of anguish and abandonment. Walking faces of metal mesh appear blank. Close inspection reveal sardonic grins and hypnotic gazes of ancestral visitors who demand payment, a little something, for the telling of our story.