#tumblr/Medulla Art Gallery

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Eden's Apple - Interpretation and ire in the works of Stuart Hahn

Medulla Art Gallery featured a talk with the Artist Stuart Hahn on Wednesday eight August twenty twenty-three. It started tentatively and ended boisterously with interviewer Natasha Ramnauth steering the conversation into territory raised by a guest about the carnivalesque. That was provoking enough, but there was a much more niggling issue that caught my attention as Mr Hahn spoke about his work.

As an avid admirer of his prolific collections over the decades I was alerted when yet again I heard him mention that he could not show nudity in public. At prior shows he had said those exact words to the audience.

Stuart Hahn - The Fall of Man

In Jamaica,the Laura Facey bronze sculpture Redemption Song is met with all the respect it deserves in a declared homophonic island. No one is deeming the public work indecent or homocentric. I found myself wondering why and how Mr Hahn has been dealing with this no man’s land quite literally for so many decades?

What does Mr Hahn have to be apologizing and hiding for? Is Stuart Hahn a maverick where nudity and male at that is concerned?

The short answer is no.

Stuart Hahn - The Fall of Man

He is preceded by the likes of Boscoe Holder and Hugh Stollmeyer. It is curious, but not fully necessary to know that those names represent men who were homosexual or bisexual. This is to be included only because of the fact that sexual history has been hard fought particularly in ultra religious spaces like Trinidad and Tobago.

Is Mr Hahn exploiting the form by showing explicit sexual acts? No.

In fact Mr Hahn only uses naked imagery in contexts where they are called for.

But instead of being caught up with his exceptional skills as a draftsman of the anatomy it is easy for the media to continue to hound his use of drawing what I can only call the subversive penis. Vaginas and breasts hold neutral ground.

Meanwhile it seems that the erect, semi-erect and inert penis causes great consternation.

We all reel daily as we read and hear of barbarically cruel murders. Yet, the penis in art is being ‘held’ as too unpalatable for sensitive constitutions.

Is there a connection between crime and the male body?

This may be an absurd question, but Mr Hahn’s work and legacy might hinge on the fact that a sense of being out of touch with the body is an important marker for all of us. An automatic fear or distaste to observe classical art in a caribbeanesque context narrows the lens.

Mr Hahn was born in Nevis of a St. Kittitian mother and Trinbagonian father. Of Caucasian heritage in a mostly brown land, a child of colonialism in San Fernando and a gay man in the Caribbean space during Black Power and Oil Money is dizzying enough. It makes one want to tear off one’s skin.

Nudity and the drawing of skin titillates. It is peeling back layers and finding oneself in private territory. Art has lauded nakedness for centuries, so, to now grapple on an island with what it means - is curious to me particularly when a few years ago Trinidad and Tobago was given the dubious honor of being in the top ten of users of porn sites in the world.

Stuart Hahn - The Murder of Abel

Mr Hahn’s Biblical, Classical Literature, Indian Mythology and local Folkloric pieces do far more than occasionally dabble in nudity. By focusing on the trite, everything that his work demonstrates gets shunted to the side. Mr Hahn’s work connects the complex past with the continuously confusing present. He shows great discipline when drawing and rendering the form with prisma color pencils and pen and ink when paint is so much faster - his almost religious penitence in lauding his characters with wings, togas and ropes of hair - yes there is homo eroticism in the work.

However, homo simply means man. I will not go down the prickly path of Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve. I also will not convince anyone of changing their sensitivities or sensibilities. I write to place Mr Hahn’s work where it needs to be. He is neither a pornographer nor a sensationalist.

That is so clear in societies great love of Derek Walcott's TiJean and his Brothers the children’s book and his innovative approach to the Black Madonna and Child way before it was fashionable to do so. As a white, Caribbean gay man making Art in Trinidad and Tobago and causing debate makes Stuart Hahn’s career an important marker in Art history - one that we all take for granted. We speak fluidly about Impressionism or Abstraction. But what of Stuart Hahn’s drawings? I suggest that as we look at Art in Trinidad and Tobago, we begin to observe what is before our very own eyes:that we respect and honor ours in the same way that we have finally given Pan the attention deserved.

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Sexypink - Medulla Art Gallery presents

West Indian dolls, a portrayal of blackness.

by WENDY NANAN

NOW SHOWING

(*There won’t be a formal opening but you can visit anytime for the duration of the exhibition)

Exhibition continues until: Friday 29th September, 2023

FREE ADMISSION - OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-2pm.

Address: #37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain.

For more information please contact:

Telephone: +1(868)680-1041, +1(868)622 -1196

Email: medullaartgallery@gmail.com

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The dolls were acquired on travels with my father throughout the Caribbean, from Caracas to Cuba, in the 1990’s. Bought in handicraft shops, made for the tourist trade, I was first intrigued by the political and social implications of how we were representing ourselves in a modern, post colonial society.

Why the use of the Aunt Jemima black face and the exotic and quaint depiction of servitude to appeal to wealthy foreigners? Why the acceptance of racist stereotypes and negative imagery, sourced from American caricatures of black people – Sambo Memorabilia?

But I also collected them because they were beautifully and intricately handmade, showing the signatures of their creators, much like fingerprints on ancient Sumerian pottery. I imagined the women making the dolls, hoping for sales, having to pander to the ingrained racist and sexist views of the buyers. More concerned with everyday survival than perpetuating these prejudices.

I recently saw a Facebook post asking for a photo-op of a coconut vendor with donkey cart. We are still painting pictures of La Belle Creole, with wooden ajoupa houses in forested clearings. In my childhood, Tourist Annie walked the streets of Port of Spain, looking very out of place. How do we see and understand ourselves, descendants of the many mixtures of colonisers, slaves and immigrants? And how have we commercialised this history and imagery into clichés to make it marketable for consumption by outside worlds? Is this the masque of our blackness as island people?

Wendy Nanan 2023

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1955, Wendy Nanan is the first Indo-Trinidadian, and among the first Caribbean women artists to have a long and sustained professional practice. She obtained her BFA at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, England in 1979. Her work is included in many public and private collections, including Trinidad and Tobago’s National Museum. In her practice, Nanan takes on core questions at the heart of historical and contemporary struggles about identity, culture and power in the region. She has produced work that is at once historically and geographically specific to the place she inhabits, and timeless, gently provocative and persistently infused with her feminist politics. While Nanan is deeply respected by peers and critics in the Caribbean, she remains an under-attended-to artist, in part due to her determined locally-situated practice, she has remained in Trinidad since completing art school in 1980, and is famously reclusive, her philosophy being that “it is more important to create the work than to seek an audience for it.”

by Dr. Andil Gosine

Image: Caribbean Madonna, 2023

Artist Bio Text: Dr. Andil Gosine

Follow @medullaartgallery on Facebook and Instagram

If you wish to subscribe to our invitation list kindly email: medullaartgallery@gmail.com

**Update: https://newsday.co.tt/2023/09/25/artist-wendy-nanan-explores-post-colonialism-identity-through-dolls/

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Sexypink - Wendy Nanan - Shows on now in Trinidad and Tobago

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One year after its publication, I'm very happy to *finally* bring "Nature's Wild" home to Medulla Art Gallery in TT. 

A moment to reflect in the company of the brilliant Andre Bagoo and Yvonne Bobb-Smith, who will read their companion texts, and to share new artworks completed with Bruce Cayonne, Bev Koski (that's her stunning beadwork on the poster image), amber williams-king and Robert Young, as well as a new presentation of Bernadette Indira Persaud's "Tree of Life." 

Plus, the electrifying Rhoma Akosua Spencer will inaugurate the whole thing. 

Space will be limited to those who have secured (free) tickets only, so please register if you plan to come:https://www.eventbrite.com/.../natures-wild-duets-tickets...

More on "Nature's Wild" here:https://www.dukeupress.edu/natures-wildandwww.andilgosine.com

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Sexypink - Wendy Nanan - Latest works @ Medulla Gallery Woodbrook Trinidad and Tobago

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                     Save the date | Medulla Gallery upcoming shows

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Kevin Adonis Browne returns to Trinidad for his fourth exhibition, A Sense of Arrival: An Exhibition of Essays, which will feature original work from his forthcoming book of the same name. These visual essays, according to Browne, are “a meditation on the complexities of Caribbean being—a memoir inspired by the precarity of the present.” The exhibition, like the book itself, is principally concerned with the articulation of Blackness as an infinite arrival—always “in the making.” In doing so, Browne attempts to orient the viewer toward new realities and mythologies—what we know, are willing to believe, and are able to imagine about Caribbeanness—as a way of being, knowing, and making (in) the world. He approaches some of our “familiar” Caribbean realities in new ways—“new,” in the experiential sense of getting to know and of coming to be known. This, he notes, is a series composed of the humanistic threads of this region—its metaphysics, rhetoric, poetics, and aesthetics. Browne’s award-winning visual and written work have previously existed at the intersection of photography and creative nonfiction. In A Sense of Arrival, he extends beyond those boundaries, reaching into the three-dimensional with a consideration of objects-as-texts in his attempt to articulate what rests at the heart of the Caribbean story. A Sense of Arrival: An Exhibition of Essays opens on October 20, 2022, at 7:00 pm at Medulla Art Gallery, Port of Spain, and will run until November 14, 2022. In addition to the ongoing exhibition, Browne will conduct a free creative nonfiction workshop on October 22 from 11:00-2:00 pm. Limited to 12 participants. On October 25 at 7:00 pm, Browne will be joined by curator and scholar Dr. Marsha Pearce for a conversation on art-making and identity. This will be accompanied by a reading from A Sense of Arrival. Please visit the EVENTS page at www.kevinadonisbrowne.com/events to RSVP and to read more about the Conversation, and to register for the Workshop. All events, excluding the workshop, are open to the public. Please be mindful that seating is limited, so please REGISTER for the workshop and RSVP for the Conversation & Reading as soon as possible. All COVID-19 protocols will be observed. Kevin Adonis Browne, PhD is a Caribbean American artist, essayist, and theorist of rhetoric and contemporary culture. He is the author of Tropic Tendencies and HIGH MAS: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture, which won the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in 2019. His work has been shown in the US and the UK, and is currently on display in Cologne, Germany. His previous exhibitions in Trinidad include “Seeing Blue” (2014) “High Mas” (2018), and “No Words” (2021). He is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Syracuse University, New York. A Sense of Arrival: An Exhibition of Essays by Kevin Adonis Browne opens at  Medulla Art Gallery on Wednesday 20, October, 2022. Follow @drbrowne on Twitter and Instagram.

Image: Kevin Adonis Browne 2018

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Galleryyuhself - Part 2 begins.

reminder: ARTIST’S TALK - FOREST NOTEBOOKS” BY MARIO LEWIS

Featuring guest speakers: Dr. Chaney C.G. St. Martin, Anna Serrao, Taya Serrao, Natalie Melas, Tao Du Four.

Moderated by: Adele Todd

Date: Wednesday 13th December, 2023.

Time: 7pm - 9pm

Exhibition closes: Wednesday 20th December, 2023.

Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-2pm

*Original works and prints are available for purchase.

FREE ADMISSION - OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

For more information please contact:

Tel: +1(868)680-1041, +1(868)622 -1196

Email: medullaartgallery@gmail.com

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Sexypink - a closer look at the work of Stuart Hahn

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Observations from the Artist Stuart Hahn

What strange and wonderful times we live in...

At my interview with Newsday there was a major problem choosing accompanying work to show (pictures of myself, roundly objected to but mandatory, it turns out, were far more important than the art actually discussed)... nudity, male nudity especially, (with penises, God forbid!) being absolutely out of the question, so I proposed this piece in all my innocence and the innocence of the little child himself. But no. Not that one either. Infact, no no NO, But Why? Because (and silly me not to know),rolling eyes... PEDOPHILIA!!! I suppose all those literally countless little baby Jesuses running through the whole history of art must also be - well but of course they are! - PEDOPHILIA, and like Michaelangelo's sinfully naked David, should be totally removed, absolutely obliterated from books and education itself lest our children and we adults too be corrupted forever...

Anyway...

The Fall Of Man

From the current exhibition EDEN at Medulla Gallery

Ink on paper.

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Sexypink - REVIEWS of A moment of Quiet by Wendy Nanan

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Rousing replies | UWI Graduate Exhibition 2023

From Kevin Baldeosingh : Remember: the woke bs infiltrated universities before it started getting people cancelled. It's already in UWI's Gender Dept, Arts, while race ideology has been in the History Dept for decades.

Reply: Martin D. Mouttet (Medulla Gallery Curator) Kevin Baldeosingh Please do not mischaracterize this event. It’s not about "woke b.s" or institutional gender and race politics…. it's simply about mental health and the role of creative expression in nurturing personal health, and how each of these students use their art practice to navigate and process harsh realities like anxiety, trauma, depression etc, and apply these tools for the greater good. That’s it.....All in this feed are welcome to attend.

Kevin Baldeosingh replies: Martin D. Mouttet Then don't use the term "safe space", which has a very specific connotation about censorship.

enter a new reply from a third party...

Vergil Hammer Chattergoon  I hear the term safe space used in forums for free expression without judgement. How do you hear it used?

Sexypink expects to add more to this space....

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Sexypink - DCFA Graduating Degree Class of 2023

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Sexypink - Medulla Art Gallery EXTENDS the Wendy Nanan show - take the opportunity to see this wonderful body of work.

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                    From the Facebook page of Kevin Adonis Browne

Announcing the opening of A SENSE OF ARRIVAL at Medulla Art Gallery in Trinidad on October 20, 7:00 pm.The exhibition will feature original work from my forthcoming book, A Sense of Arrival. 

Visit kevinadonisbrowne.com for more info and to register for the in-person workshop, conversation, and reading.Looking forward to seeing you there!