Book Description

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.