Jaw-Bone, or House John-Canoe

~The previous chapter examined how printed caricatures designed to solicit satiric laughter affected the formation of a set of fragmented types used to characterize the “slavish negro” in the years prior to the abolition of the slave trade. This kind of satire...

~Through public performance across the Caribbean, African cultures found common ground to express both their varied origins and shared experiences. Public art became an outlet for the ever-changing identities of the region’s populations and the traditions they sought to preserve. Jonkonnu is the Jamaican reformulation of the tradition of the masquerade, a...

Sketches of Character

Just as the Caribbean itself is an intricate layering of cultures that continually migrate and merge, the region’s art is a dynamic and constantly changing force—adapting to, responding to, and interacting with lived experience. An examination of regional artistic practice across a range of media highlights the role of religion in providing artists all over the Caribbean with access to...

Isaac Mendes Belisario’s prints indelibly document the Afro-Jamaican masked festival known as Jánkúnu. During recent research on Kongo art...