Tarantula: Authors And Art's Featured Artists Of November
Conveying A Sense of Urgency with Andrea Chung
My work connects the innumerable layers of exploitation that resulted from centuries of colonialism and the implications that are still felt presently. I focus primarily on island nations in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which are extensions of my own ancestral legacy and familial narrative. I am particularly interested in labor and how materials, locations, and cultural processes can be combined to illuminate the often erased stories of people who were treated as currency within colonial workforces. More importantly, I seek to amplify the acts, ideologies, and practices that survived despite the fragmentation of history that occurred throughout the Transatlantic Slave Trade and present-day forced migration. I make work that incorporates materials that are representative of these cultures and/or signify broader themes of labor and geographic movement. Often ephemeral in nature, my work regularly incorporates themes related to the reclamation of feminine power, dark humor, and the distortion of seduction and beauty as vehicles for cultural criticism and the rejection of a whitewashed history.
-Andrea Chung
We first came across Andrea Chung’s work a few years ago as they covered the pages of another magazine Zoetrope: All Story. Her collages on white paper with cut out black and white photos of Caribbean women of African descent in the centre, surrounded by colourful lush island fauna and flora, gazed back at us with such poise. However, the story behind these works of art carried another story.
The photos of these Jamaican and Trinidadian women were taken by white European photographers to sell them as postcards in Europe. If you look closer at their faces, you will see that they are actually not happy: they felt bare and exposed in front of the lenses of these men. It was time to take them back from that narrative and give them the respect that they deserved. Chung decorates them in beads and wraps them with plants from their original heritage, bringing them back to the contexts and geography where they belong; and away from the colonial gaze.
Tarantula: Authors And Art is looking forward to spend the month of November with Chung’s works and the themes that they embody. We would like to thank our featured artists of July Nina Buesing for the introduction and making this a reality.