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from the series Chantuelle: Our Present Image
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These images are influenced by a 1947 work by Mexican muralist and social realist painter José David Alfaro Siqueiros, titled Our Present Image. Siqueiros believed art should be public, educational, and ideological. This is one of his 1930s works prominently featuring hands as a symbol of working class strength, of everyday people involved in the struggle to overcome authoritarian, capitalist rule.
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| from the series Chantuelle: Our Present Image |
My translation of this work, in acrylics and oil pastels on crumpled packaging paper, shows the Grenada Shortknee – a faceless identity in cultural society – in a provocative pose, arms outstretched (pleading or begging?) with open palms, the perspective distorted both to the person he approaches and the Vecco, the grim underbelly of the annual mas. The image with the coins is particularly telling of our present image to the world.
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| from the series Chantuelle: Our Present Image |
Our Present Image is part of my translation series, an ongoing visual study to move this street performance to canvas. The ShortKnee as Art.