Tristes Tropique in Jacqueline Bishop's Patchwork Aesthetics

all photos courtesy of the artistJacqueline Bishop's celebrated piece Tristes Tropique I (2013), exhibited in the 2014 Jamaican Biennale, is part of the artist's larger engagement with the utopic and the dsytopic, the local and the global, the image and the gaze, in representations of the island of Jamaica. In this piece, Bishop restructures and recasts portraiture as a means to engage with nature and the naturalistic in order to dialogue concerning the authorship of Caribbean subjectivity. This work is an interposition between the two parts of Bishop's A View from Afar series that I call Landscapes: Jamaica (2010-ongoing) and the Dudus Chronicles (2011), which together represent a juxtaposition of the different Jamaicas she depicts in her work. Bishop's artscapes sit in the midst of dialogic engagement between the rural and urban contexts in Jamaican society; between the gaze up close and the romantic gaze from afar; between a sense of outsiderness and insiderness, but always in a space of belonging to an island that is rimmed and defined by racialized capitalism, a legacy of colonial disequity, touristic dreams and delusions, and violent social relations that spring from its inability to reconfigure its broken economical terrain. In effect, these artscapes allow for art and politics, the abstract and the material, the analytical and the activist, to commingle and resonate through processes of unsettling accepted suppositions, conceptualizations, narratives, and edicts.Tristes Tropique is an obvious invocation of Claude Levi-Strauss's (1955/1961) famous text, and Bishop uses the title as an evocative reminder of the melancholy and distress that undergirds Caribbean life. Levi-Strauss's work is a memoir that also becomes an ironic critique of the impact of human exegesis in forms of domination and exoticism under the prism of tourism, travel, and study. With this particular image, Bishop, like Levi-Strauss, creates a self-reflexive work that imbricates the fragility of the ecology and the place of Jamaicans within the narratology of Island life. This work, measuring 50.8 cm × 25.4 cm, is part of a new, ongoing photographic series by Bishop. The work is formed out of ripped, jagged photographs, pieced back together in odd, asymmetrical patterns, and in the midst stands a black-and-white image of a child surrounded by a mix-match of tropicality, a testament to people who are often unseen and a place that is so paradoxical. However, it is very much representative of how Bishop generates her own aesthetic form in her use of the techniques of intermedia, bricolage, and collaging, which I call “patchwork aesthetics,” a form which Bishop says derives from her foremothers who were visual artists.In Tristes Tropique I, Bishop builds on Levi-Strauss's critique of how the indigenous are misinterpreted and elided from Western narratives by simultaneously interpolating her ancestral connectedness in the mixed media she employs and by creating a different subject view that emanates from within the photograph, welling from an iris that gently overlays, but does not obscure, the black-and-white image of the child. The outer portions of the photograph are scenes of nature, the lushness of the bush, with a ring of bright pink bougainvillea across the top; the child—a studio portrait of Jacqueline Bishop herself—sits in its midst outlined by the shape of an eye, with its looming iris (Fig. 1). Only the lower half of the child's face is seen, along with her upper torso; her eyes are obscured by the bougainvillea that blocks her view, but since she is placed in the middle of the iris, she implicates the gaze facing her. This would normally control her representation. Here, it does not. In effect, Bishop creates a visual doubling of the gaze from inside the photograph and the perception from the viewer outside that allows for a reinscription of Jamaican subjectivity. The external perspective, in looking at the photograph, may have dismissed the child by never allowing her dimensionality, but Bishop forcing her viewers to also be viewed shifts the terrain of subjectivity. By inverting subject/object positionality, Bishop represents the importance of self-definition, self-imaging, and self-imagining, especially given her insider/outsider relationship with Jamaica.A View from Afar begins with the celebratory narrative of Jamaica in vistas of the bucolic nature of the island and hinges on the romantic gaze from near and far, in the characteristic, picturesque beauty of life in the “country,” views that tourists love. Bishop's series is about the life of the folk, but it is not folksy. So we must ask, what do these paintings say about the simple life in the country, in a little cottage made from wood, colorfully painted, sitting in an idyllic setting, surrounded by lush vegetation? Juxtaposed is the second half of the series, which highlights Bishop's exploration of the oppositional dynamic of the urban jungle, where one yard is a compound that houses many families; where, at times, flushing toilets do not exist; where one has to guard self, family, house, and possessions from all forms of forced infringement; where drugs, murder, and rape are as commonplace as the bananas sprouting off a tree in this beloved country. Bishop's images gesture to and frame a pivotal period in the recent history of Jamaica. The drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke is the subject-object, the hero-villain, whom Jamaicans simultaneously adore, excoriate, protect, and long to forget. Jamaica has more than two sides, we know, but the contrastive modes of these rural and urban scapes allow for these two emblematic realities to speak to each other through this collection in a way that they may not in the geopolitical prism of this land.I place the series of A View from Afar and Tristes Tropique I in the overarching motif of Bishop's patchwork aesthetics due to her intertextual layering of media, image, text, color, and language to recast the narrative of belonging to the island-nation. Bishop's aesthetic style invokes so many other artists, as seen with Romare Bearden's use of mixed media, Betty Saar's assemblages, Kara Walker's silhouettes, and Carrie Mae Weems's photomontage in what Caroline Brown describes as a “revolt against discursive certainty that visual realism produces” (2012: 14). I also consider the overall trajectory of Bishop's work of diaspolitan significance, in that it interrogates the structures of power and the limits of economical, social, and national mobility, while it embeds a particularly ancestral thread—a link, even—in its aesthetic formation. I have coined the term “diaspolitan” from “re-diaspora,” a term I previously created to refer to the continual transnational movement of diasporic citizens (Sterling 2012: 346–57), those who are descendants of an already-named and often-celebrated diaspora that began with the transatlantic slave trade. They are often the children of immigrants, who traversed one diasporic space to another in search of economic betterment. The diaspolite tend to be a particularly politically conscious, knowledgeable, and most likely creative lot. Bishop's work captures the antithetical dynamics that not only define the island, but travel with the diaspolite to generate narratives of accord and discord, longing and remembrance, desire and shame, which simultaneously propels and embellishes their journeys “home” and everywhere else.Landscapes: Jamaica stands in patent contrast to the urban unrest in the Dudus Chronicles in A View from Afar. According to Bishop,I call these portraits Landscapes: Jamaica because of the focus on views and vistas in the paintings, which, says Bishop, began creatively as an interrogation, but end up as an interpolation of the deliberate writing-out of the peoples of the Caribbean from the colonial encounter until now. The Caribbean is an invented space, constructed as a space of primal beauty, an idyllic tropical locale with amazing vegetation that borders on the surreal.2 Its original peoples were either conveniently written out of the narrative or reinvented as fossilized, childlike primitives and, of course, in the actual narrative of history, exterminated. The implantation of Africans on its shores did not change the essential image of the islands, but only of its peoples as an ignorant, idolatrous, recalcitrant lot best bred for work. The consumerism of the modern-day Caribbean is still based on the tropes of its magnificent and unparalleled combination of sun, sand, and sea that undergirds the adverts telling all to “Come to Jamaica, your new Island home,” that “It's better in the Bahamas,” where it is “Beautiful by Nature.”3 As Mimi Sheller (2003: 36) these are to tourists in the Caribbean from and by images of the and I would like to to and to all your The Caribbean in its of seen in the second part of Bishop's of and not the subject of these and and to the beauty of the but it is a beauty that is through the gaze that to out the social and economic under which a of Jamaicans Jamaica in A Bishop uses the visual to the with the a gaze, as the only sense consumerism and and the of as The are on a series of cm × cm which a of form with the Dudus Chronicles to a and a on the Jamaicans to portraiture and but that is the of their with Bishop simultaneously the of as seen in Tristes Tropique I, where the of the and the to the best is and in the image of the is the an that is in her larger of with nature, and and only which be to the that tourists as of amazing in a country. Bishop the of these and so the and structures that she and in the out against the lush of the and the of a of the of the Caribbean that Bishop's this of color, creating a that the of by in and a place be so this she uses the in each she this narrative of by as the and that are on all Jamaica. As the who in their for the that like a is for for the that they this series in what I call an the other of history that is written out of accepted narratives of of and The becomes its own of Jamaicans their in the and their of of not to the island, but to the of image its own but together they form an a that that these that the Jamaican are not picturesque to a of people are in each image because they are not the of the gaze, but they are through the of these the tourists do not but what is in Bishop's of color, is that the the the more the as the different on different of that are only together to a (Fig. has to do the tourists consider the people who in these simple or they out of their one that all they in the and the lushness of their they each as they from a or a I to in a and life and are they back to these are the that are by Bishop's would like to of the images that the dialogic between and image in the Dudus In Bishop uses a of on the structures to the of tropical images with the for and on this is another that highlights the dreams of its these is that these are not picturesque created for the gaze of but of of economic and of and for betterment. are to Jamaican and aesthetic these are the of the rural who but many a and also like these to life many who only have and the of the is part of their it is not especially or it allows to with to Bishop's is to up the on these of Jamaicans on the but to not the of but also of is the visual and her aesthetic sense and are also a part of the and one of the most in as people and and a were to This all in the to drug “Dudus” the of to to the has the local term to refer to Dudus and from on in the However, the that many of the were that many citizens were and or and under for the of and the is the subject of Jacqueline Bishop's Dudus an collection of simultaneously and on cm × 25.4 cm Bishop uses these to the of but within the of the The be or on a or as a series of or on an I the of the Dudus Chronicles as and as Bishop creates two very different of The is a of with the of the and so but so from the shores (Fig. This is a of in the from its to its colonial highlights and the and as as the of the which the from to the and all of a The in of and is on the like a a in an overall sea of to and of the Jamaican The relationship to an of course, the of Jamaican Bishop begins narrative in the of from a in the forced of its in the of a of and the and that to transatlantic and the of peoples in the This but obscured history to the of the image, which is a of the and the Caribbean on a sea of and the Caribbean at the of the in the shape of an is a of parts of (Fig. these paintings that the of in Dudus is not does not in a but is part of a long of and the and the of to their way to the of I I it so that this is the for say for where the in it is that Dudus the because like the However, I not but like so many in language of the Jamaican for for or for a of in Jamaica. In the accepted we only the that the This is not Bishop she is telling the Jamaican of the her gaze is from the way that the drug lord given the because of in and for the and of people Dudus the Jamaican the whom the in the of simultaneously and This of the may have in because in narratives by the in the the in the celebrated but the Jamaican narrative the and like and were not who of or the the other in to the to they with of the have a in The through the The They which the of based on a of that from the In this Jamaicans their and against of and in the the and began its and its in a of it a of in this the and with an that an for the of would be near to and would only end one way it by the that to 2012: so that each it a on the where the would form and with each other the best In tourists would on to the an amazing of tourists in the middle of the or in one of the on the island to what one of the most by the The would through in a or The would the still as the through the and they would up to the as a through a never Dudus these but the power because would this as through the with in the midst of two to how much the people of In a from is on a pink and in the with a and in the of the gesture for with the title of an from the Jamaica for Dudus from the people of and the is to In a that has social and for the the the of the Dudus up a social where for and for and a that local and for the the for 2012: Bishop's the period out on the and against In an in The about a in which of with Dudus and for for Bishop's use of and to this combination of and as she highlights the of these either in or she does not is how the of the country, and a to the until from the which the of Jamaica forced to The power of the so that many to Jamaica were I to a that period to I not one that they all would have between and to to an island that is only This may the of in these two and Bishop's in her on the and on the of is the and the The are to the Jamaican middle and the and are with magnificent houses and They were also as the or The are for the in created from a through the of with the of as and it a of for the Jamaica from the and these to either the or the 2012: So people would and did for and the of on the of becomes the subject of the images in Bishop's of the of these images is in that gesture to the and of a black-and-white image of Dudus in the in which on an image of the as a sitting in to the and With Dudus have for a the the and to (Fig. A Dudus in is a reminder of the who uses and to the and to in an with the people in and are to the and social but they in slave The Jamaican as by is much more and employs for and to domination by and to own power and the of Dudus as a of the between life and and a of and actual and while is often those who is also in with of as the we in Bishop's image its on its and The with Dudus on of the of of diasporic citizens and the of from a subject to an and becomes in the two is of Dudus in the of with on under in the of the is a face and (Fig. the face is to be emblematic of the who the ancestral to whom we are all or who in a in in while is for the viewer to In this frame of and Dudus is in made a a of power or the of the to have in the island The second frame begins a in the we have in the frame is a which back to a of the is a of visual by and the of the in in the upper is in to a series of or placed and in the like the from and the placed in the of an this is to and much like the of an who about the Dudus (Fig. a drug a does the of and its power to people on a does it to the movement of Jamaicans in and out of their power does it from the of a that This series to be about but Bishop's so much more about positionality, and in the of frame back to but an an by the of its children in the more than one is on this with a on about by in Jamaica, is in on of an of to the image on of the other is a layering of history, an on the of of and of the belonging of peoples (Fig. and with images of it often to a especially from the diasporic of an to the and generate a Bishop's Dudus Chronicles becomes a a together of the of history and the of which to a reminder that the visual and the do not always in the of geopolitical of in of A View from Afar and Tristes Tropique I is and at the The patchwork motif Bishop's as she uses this of and images not only to the of of the Jamaican but also as an form in her aesthetic and In an Bishop that she from her and out that she from a long of foremothers who were visual In Bishop has with creating a series of in her and to of Jamaica (Sterling in which she simultaneously the beauty of her in the creative vistas of her In a made as a to her Bishop also and by of her in the middle of the piece (Fig. 14). Its outer constructed from of the that her. Tristes Tropique I on narratives of and about Jamaica, Bishop allows this together to be an of the between the and the of how is to her and how the of within Caribbean in and that would only be in a more an its own which we do in this the aesthetic that must an like Jacqueline Bishop, from a place to a transnational are and is within the of and travel not from one to but one to to to work, to to is by that allow for on more than a with other and but it is also formed from a sense of that from her sense of belonging to a is to that the diaspolite is not the who for a that on that have by across that one to their their aesthetic their of human their of history, and their of is the diaspolite the who for of a as an transnational of who The diaspolite with but is from not only the of like Jamaica or or or the she which is often a but also an ancestral to a history from The diaspolite has a sense of from her of that allows her to be a part of other and her or her sense of the way she and with the This is what is in Jacqueline Bishop's art and it becomes to as the aesthetic that her is in the of or patchwork as it is in Jamaica, is the work of and is still The of the in the art as as to the of as of a and is only especially with the given to from to like and However, in Jamaica, the is still little and in this Jacqueline Bishop is the of patchwork on the national we are to use the of art because of the techniques that Bishop her use of wood, the of the the collaging, her and together of would be The famous and out the of the term as it is to refer to of or The art is more than this particular it on and and Bishop's to art in her use of the techniques of intermedia, bricolage, and is to I term her work “patchwork because of the in which she together the that her creative to do what to as the of to a patchwork aesthetics has its in the that Bishop's which has a larger trajectory in the that the with from across the The most obvious of the is through the of within the that place at The is made from of that the from to may have it is a of Its of in is as it has to the and but it is an invocation of the and its as a of the of the across diasporic 2012: However, the from in Jamaica are from the people in and and a but one is from the who the of and these were the of the in together to a larger that the with its pieced to visual out the and of in which the aesthetic sense that the that and are In what that the of the of and slave work in its own and so the and, by the of is a in the of art from her her aesthetic legacy different series of that her social overarching motif of Tristes Tropique hinges on that engagement with the but it is also an engagement with the in its of color, image, and on and each other to her patchwork are more in Landscapes: Jamaica, as each piece of on each on each be a piece of to form a a a particular of the of the Jamaican However, it is also in her use of in the Dudus her layering of photographs, and from a sense of that that the end of layering is a sense of a contrastive that and of to allow for their is and as an for its beauty and by its amazing its its its and its but its is the of and this view and it is often in the of the who an idyllic island this is not Jacqueline Bishop's and as she along with its beauty, is also the of Dudus the of an that only in the national they are by the is a that often and does not of its where are out to relations of where the of its people is for by drug and the are given but to for their This is the Tristes

Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Dialogic · Epistemology · Gaze · Literature · Performative utterance · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · Subjectivity · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Urban and Rural Development Challenges

• Beyond Sun and Sand

  Barbara Lynch, Marin Miller et al.•Beyond Sun and Sand•2020

  Add to list

• Consuming the Caribbean

  Mimi Sheller•Consuming the Caribbean•2003

  Add to list

• Tradition and the Yoruba Artist

  Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, Olabiyi Babalola Yai•African Arts•1999

  Add to list

• Surviving Secularization

  Open Access•Kenneth Bilby, Kenneth M Bilby•New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe…•2010

  Add to list

• The Popular Culture of Illegality

  R Jaffe•Anthropological Quarterly•2012

  Add to list