My exploration of Grenada’s carnival icon, the ShortKnee focuses on translations of other artists’ works featuring pierrot figures, or those dealing with war, migration, desolation and isolation, elements which birthed an unique and iconic masquerade.
Chaotic events south of the Sahara and on the streets of Europe, led to a celebration of survival called Carnival, from which, in Grenada the ShortKnee emerged. West African masquerade traditions fused with French carnavale elements to produce the ShortKnee, a masked carnival character wrapped in six and a half yards of vulgar fabric, mirrors, whistles, bells and baby powder. They never laugh. Hidden under white head towels, disembodied under yards and yards of deliberately mismatched fabric, they are breathtaking in brilliant sunlight.
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| Women and a ShortKnee |
Emil Nolde’s 1917 Women and a Pierrot is a bit risqué, but the concept, when applied to the ShortKnee, and the apparent penchant of young women (so I am told) to be attracted to the man behind the mask and under all that fabric, makes sense. After the carnival is over, and the ShortKnee returns home, bits and pieces of his costume are taken as souvenirs, as talismans by these young women, a ritual that has ancient roots. This translation of Nolde’s work I call Women and a ShortKnee.