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Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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EN MAS': Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean

Publication

$49.95

Edited by Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson. Foreword and Acknowledgements by Neil Barclay and Renaud Proch. Texts by D. Eric Bookhardt, Petrina Dacres, Paul Goodwin, Shannon Jackson, Erica Moiah James, Nicholas Laughlin, Thomas J. Lax, Alanna Lockward, Kobena Mercer, Annie Paul, Claire Tancons, Krista Thompson and Yolande-Salomé Toumson. Artists include John Beadle, Charles Campbell, Christophe Chassol, Nicolás Dumit Estévez, Marlon Griffith, Hew Locke, Ebony G. Patterson, Lorraine O’Grady, and Cauleen Smith.

Publisher: Independent Curators International (ICI) and Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (CAC)
Designer: Geoff Kaplan / General Working Group
Hbk, 7x 10 in. / 200 pages, color
ISBN: 9780916365899
$49.95

EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean is an extension of the Independent Curators International (ICI) and Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (CAC) produced touring exhibition of the same title. The publication is an extension of the exhibition curated by Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson, but is also one of the first publications to give serious scholarly attention to contemporary art practices considering the connections between Carnival and performance, masquerade and social criticism, diaspora and transnationalism. EN MAS’ will appeal to popular and scholarly audiences interested in Caribbean art, contemporary art, and performance studies. It fills a gap in two decades of exhibitions of contemporary Caribbean art that did not explicitly address Carnival as an artistic practice nor conceptualize distinct and historical forms of Caribbean art.

EN MAS’ includes scholarly essays by leading art historians Shannon Jackson and Kobena Mercer along with the two curators Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson, which offer formal and theoretical analyses of the artists’ projects as well as explorations of Caribbean aesthetic practices and their impact on art and performance studies more broadly. In addition, the nine newly commissioned artist projects which are the basis for the exhibition will be fully illustrated and further enhanced by responsive essays from writers and curators in each hosting city such as Nicholas Laughlin from Port of Spain, Petrina Dacres from Kingston, Paul Goodwin from London and Thomas J. Lax from New York.

Within a unique 32 page gate-fold timeline, the publication will trace the influence of Caribbean carnivals and festivals on theater, dance, social events, games and the Olympics, exhibitions and biennials, as well as in protest and other movements, all the way to the present.