Join us Thursday, April 23, at 6 pm, for a talk by Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist and scholar Patricia Encarnación, entitled Stories for Post-Coloniality: Memorias, Cimarronas, & Un Quilombo Tropical (Maroon Memories). Encarnación’s work challenges colonial tropes within African diasporic culture, with a particular focus on the Caribbean, approached through an anti-colonial lens.

Encarnación will talk about their research-driven project, which incorporates ceramics, video, and sound. It is grounded in the premise that we have not yet reached “postcoloniality” but continue to live within an extended afterlife of Western coloniality. The series proposes building mnemonic “capsules” of cultural technology, archives, and monuments with Maroon communities (self-liberated slaves who escaped and established free Black settlements in secluded or inhospitable areas) whose histories have been forced into invisibility within plantation economies: bateyes, palenques, and quilombos.

This talk is supported by the International Affairs Program, Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program, Black Studies Program, MDOCS, the World Languages and Literatures Department, and the Tang Museum.

About the Artist

Patricia Encarnación (she/they) is an Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artivist and scholar based in New York City. Their work challenges colonial tropes in Caribbean culture through an anti-colonial lens. Encarnación has participated in residencies and programs including The Shed, Smack Mellon (Van Lier Fellow), MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Kovent Catalonia, and the Silver Arts Project at the World Trade Center. Their work has been recognized by CIFO, the NALAC Fund for the Arts, and the Centro León Jiménez Biennial, where they received the Cádiz, Spain, cultural immersion prize, and a fellowship in Martinique through the Tropiques Atrium Caribbean art program. Exhibitions include Documenta 15, the Tribeca Artists Award Program, the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the NADA Art Fair, and the Washington Project for the Arts. Alongside their artistic practice, Encarnación has led curatorial projects with New York University, Centro de la Imagen, the Bronx Museum, ChaShaMa, WOPHA Miami, and alternative spaces across New York City, Miami, and the Dominican Republic.