Laura Anderson Barbata: Transcommunality

January 16 - October 2, 2021

LAURA ANDERSON BARBATA

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LAURA ANDERSON BARBATA

TRANSCOMMUNALITY The process-driven practices of artist Laura Anderson Barbata engage a wide variety of platforms and geographies. Centered on issues of cultural diversity and sustainability, her work blends political activism, street theater, sculpture, and arts education. Since the early 1990s, Anderson Barbata has initiated projects with people living in the Amazon of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and New York. The results of these collaborations range from public processional performances to artist books and handmade paper, textiles, garments, and the repatriation of an exploited 19th century Mexican woman.

Over the years, Anderson Barbata’s art has brought public attention to several issues of civil, indigenous, and environmental rights.

Transcommunality focuses on five collaborations that Anderson Barbata has made across the Americas and presents them together for the first time. Though varying in process, tradition, and message – each of these collaborative projects emphasizes Anderson Barbata’s understanding of art as a system of shared practical actions that has the capacity to increase communication around topics of cultural diversity and to create sites of human connection or belonging. In featured projects such as Intervention: Indigo, characters that represent ancestral and protective spirits reckon with the past to address present-day systemic violence and human rights abuses. In The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, Barbata’s efforts critically shift the narratives of disability, human worth and cultural memory. Earlier works crafted with Yanomami and Ye’kuana peoples, as well as Barbata’s most recent creations, profoundly consider the impact of an individual on their local community’s future, through actions of reciprocity that are both intentional and organic.

Transcommunality offers a space to contemplate ritual, folklore and impact of the natural environment on culture. It equally centers oral histories and the interdisciplinary academic thought that shapes Anderson Barbata’s engaging creations. Celebrating the human experience, Anderson Barbata’s globally diverse collaborators consciously revive intangible cultural heritage and resist homogenization by deploying skills inherent to the survival of their local expressions. Performance documentation and stunning garments throughout the museum invite onlookers to connect with the traditions of West Africa, the Amazon, Mexico, and the Caribbean while exploring visual narratives.

Opposite: Laura Anderson Barbata, Julia Pastrana thinking of Daphne / Julia Pastrana pensando en Daphne, 2010.

Cover: Laura Anderson Barbata, Indigo Queen (detail), 2015, from Intervention: Indigo.

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Left: Laura Anderson Barbata, Semanta Santa, 2012; Right: Laura Anderson Barbata, Traje Jumbie Oaxaqueño (Oaxacan Jumbie Suit), 2012.

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NEUTRAL GROUNDS LAURA ANDERSON BARBATA’S PATH TO SOCIAL PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE

BY LAURA BLEREAU, NEWCOMB ART MUSEUM CURATOR AND COORDINATOR OF ACADEMIC PROGRAMMING

This essay seeks to contextualize Laura Anderson Barbata’s sculptures within a framework of socially engaged art and performance.

Experiencing the Work

an opportunity to pause and consider this artist’s masterful approach toward community engagement; her roving cultural ties between New York, the Caribbean, and Mexico; and to appreciate

The exhibition Transcommunality at

the global genre of processional arts.

Newcomb Art Museum features a selection

The pure visual beauty of her creations

of Laura Anderson Barbata’s collaborative

meld modern and indigenous traditions

works since 1997 and highlights twenty-

of textile design and incite curiosity about

nine wearable sculptures. This static

costuming, particularly as a vehicle to

display on supports and mannequins is

transcend borders and eras.1 Anderson

presented alongside ample documentation

Barbata is energized by all people and

of the objects’ usage, including ten videos

brings fine art to the streets – a space

– essential temporal records of the social

she uses to unite divided classes and to

behavior and oral history embedded into

raise public awareness of critical issues

the works – as well as photographs and

impacting the environment and social

lenticular prints by Stefan Falke and Frank

justice. Her decision to prioritize displays

Veronsky. Since the early 2000s, Anderson

occurring outside of museum and gallery

Barbata has created wearable sculptures

walls is significant, and city architecture

for use by intergenerational stilt-dancers

typically plays a role in her choreographies.

and ground performers in street theater settings. These works are designed to be

Social Practice & Relationships

worn as garments and accessories that

Anderson Barbata’s wearable sculptures

correspond to specific narratives and

are the results of prolonged community

characters imagined for outdoor festivals,

relationships and, as her oeuvre has

annual celebrations, public interventions

developed over two decades, these objects

and protests, as well as educational

have traced a living world history of stilt-

workshops and demonstrations of

dancing artistry. Performers who wear the

intangible cultural heritage.

works she designs do so based on shared

The extended duration of this exhibit (now open through October 2, 2021) offers

goals of live participation, and together they generate an immersive transcultural dialog with the audience and other 4

performers.

Over time, three very specific communities of tradition bearers for stilt-dancing have emerged as Anderson Barbata’s repeat collaborators. First, from 2002 - 2006, she collaborated with the Moko Jumbie Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture founded by Glenn “Dragon” de Souza in the Cocorite neighborhood in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago.

Second, from 2007 onwards, Anderson Barbata collaborated with the Brooklyn Jumbies founded by Najja Codrington trained in the Chakaba stilt-dancing traditions of Senegal, and Ali Sylvester, trained by Glenn “Dragon” de Souza in Trinidad; operating primarily in the US in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York.

Third, she has collaborated from 2009 onwards with Los Zancudos de Zaachila, led by Captain Don José Medoza Ortiz in the San Pedro neighborhood of Zaachila, Oaxaca, Mexico.2 How did Anderson Barbata arrive at a methodology to craft the prolonged community relationships required for such dynamic partnerships? As early as 1992, the platforms of fiber arts and education increasingly appeared in her collaborations – such as G.R.A.S. in Trinidad and The Yanomami Paper Project in the Venezuelan Amazon, two social enterprises focused on ecologically sustainable hand papermaking.3 Over many years, these activities yielded tools 5

for sharing skills and traditions (including books, paper, drawings and instructional videos) while simultaneously increasing the cultural visibility of community participants. During this period Anderson Barbata came to understand art as a system of shared practical actions that have the capacity to increase communication around topics of cultural diversity and to create sites of human connection or belonging.

Performance Anderson Barbata’s deep respect for the processional arts draws inspiration, in part, from the Mardi Gras carnival displays that she saw as a child raised in the 1960s in Mazatlán, on the Pacific coast of Sinaloa. Since 1898 this oceanside town has been home to Carnavales de Confeti y Serpentina, one of the largest modern carnival celebrations. Ranked third in size behind Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans, the citywide festivities in

Opposite page, top image: Laura Anderson Barbata with the Moko Jumbie Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture and Ronald Guy James, Queen Nyame / Reina Nyame, 2005-2007. Background: Documentation from the collaborative Yanomami Owë Mamotima Project, 1992-2008. Middle image: Laura Anderson Barbata, selections from Intervention: Indigo, 2015, from left to right: Indigo King, Indigo Angel, Indigo Blankets, Little Jaguar, Indigo Queen, Rolling Calf, Rogue Cop, and Indigo Trinidad. Bottom image: Left to right: Laura Anderson Barbata, Oaxacan Dancer / Bailarina Oaxaqueña, 2012; Laura Anderson Barbata with Don José Mendoza (stilts) and Jesús Sosa Calvo and Juana Ortega Fuentes (artisans), Masks / Mascaras, 2012; Laura Anderson Barbata with Don José Mendoza (stilts) and Olegario Hernández (artisan) Jícaras, 2012; Laura Anderson Barbata with Oscar Vazquez (stilts), Columns / Columnas, 2012.

Laura Anderson Barbata with Don José Mendoza (stilts) and Vicente Matías Fabián and Juana Venegas (artisans), Life and Death / Vida y muerte, 2012.

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Left: Laura Anderson Barbata, Happy Suit, 2008; Middle: Laura Anderson Barbata, El Señor de Aztlán / The Lord of Aztlán, 2008; Right: Laura Anderson Barbata with the Moko Jumbie Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture and Ronald Guy James, Dogon, 2005.

Mazatlán offer a week of sensory overload

(most recenly) from traditional Chinese

that incorporate local traditions of music,

stilt-dancers of the Joan Walker group

costuming, parades, royal hierarchies and

and drag queen Becca D’Bus in Singapore,

the expected disorderly behavior that

to Jamaican-born choreographer Chris

unites people of all ages.

Walker based in Wisconsin, the Afro-

In 2002, while living in Trinidad and Tobago following her independent university studies in Rio De Janeiro, Anderson Barbata sought to learn

Amerindian and Mexican musical act Jarana Beat, and the Afro-Mexican group Diablos de la Costa Chica de Guerrero “Los Rebeldes del Capricho.”

from community-led Mas and Carnival

The garments Anderson Barbata

traditions and volunteered to work

designs empower the performers with

– in collaboration with many carnival

costumed identities. Her work’s enduring

arts makers, children, and parents – to

relationship with the Brooklyn Jumbies

develop costumes and themes for parade

has resulted in many suits for stilt-dancing

competitions. Today, her trajectory of

Moko Jumbie figures, a traditional Mas

collaboration with performing artists in

character deriving its name from the West

the US and abroad continues to educate

African tradition that often appears in

and heighten public awareness of different

the parades during Carnival season and

cultural groups and diaspora – ranging

Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago,

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from a North American textile company, and a massive headdress that shimmers with 85 recycled CDs, which reflect ambient light and are framed by long green and blue plumes of fabric. Shortly after its creation, this work appeared in a spontaneous intervention titled Hay Dioses Que Nunca Mueren / There are Gods that Never Die performed by Najja Codrington of the Brooklyn Jumbies on the streets of New York’s stylish Soho-Chinatown neighborhood. Amidst this urban commercial corridor, El Señor symbolized Chicano liberation6, rising on stilts from the environment as an indigenous spirit to uplift the legacies of forgotten peoples, the Laura Anderson Barbata, El Señor de Aztlán / The Lord of Aztlán (detail), 2008

cast-off materials of settler colonialism.

Keeping it Local

as well as in Masquerade in Guyana and

Certainly, our own local histories of

throughout the Caribbean in Jonkonnu

pageantry and community activism

festivals. The totemic presence of such

resonate with these and other projects by

figures connects onlookers to rituals of the

Anderson Barbata, such as Intervention:

ancestral realm and other narratives that

Indigo and The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana

ceremoniously reflect on the environment,

– which affirm cultural identity and offer

indigenous cultures, and religious

bold messages of hope for those who

cosmologies. Anderson Barbata’s practice

are most vulnerable in society. Multiple

also reminds us that the sacred traditions

documentaries and books capture the

of stilt-dancing hold ties to the ancient

living process of creating racial equality in

K’iche’ Mayan culture located in present-

New Orleans using the arts as a platform

day Mexico and Central America.

of support, particularly via popular and

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At Newcomb, the exhibition’s centerpiece El Señor de Aztlán / The Lord of Aztlán (2008) is displayed in the main gallery at thirteen feet tall (image above). This colorful suit is comprised of a shirt and pants built from hundreds of fabric scraps

community-driven expressions of Black street procession, music, dance and dress.7 In a 2018 interview, Big Chief Shaka Zulu of the Golden Feather Hunters recalled Tremé after the I-10 Claiborne Avenue overpass was built in1968, which

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left the historically African American neighborhood economically devastated: “Super Sunday started out as a protest.

You look at the bridge downtown on North Claiborne. Baba Jerome Smith of Tambourine and Fan protested under the bridge because a lot of the businesses closed down, depressing the area and changing the neighborhood.”

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In a rare year of cancelled funeral processions and public Mardi Gras parades, this moment of universal pause offers fresh perspective on the power of local street culture that connects diverse people together in Louisiana year after year. Due to Covid-related restrictions on travel and crowds, as of this writing, Anderson Barbata and her core collaborators in performance have not yet been able to activate the wearable sculptures presented on exhibit in New Orleans. However, the museum has invited local practitioners of textile and processional arts – such as culture bearers Queen “Reesie” of the Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society and Big Chief Shaka Zulu – to creatively respond to Transcommunality. The exhibition’s educational programming will continue to unfold through October with teachings

1. The exhibit includes Anderson Barbata’s suits made with fabrics woven by regional textile masters of Oaxaca and embroidery from the indigenous Wixárika and Amuzgo, as well as hand-carved wooden stilts adorned with velas de concha, jicalpextles, and tonas. She collaborated extensively with Oaxacan folk artisans in 2011-2012.

2. At age 81, “Tio José” passed away on March 22, 2021, after leading his stilt-dancing community for over 60 years.

3. Melissa Potter, Among Tender Roots (Chicago: Center for Book & Paper Arts, Columbia College, 2010).

4. Laura Anderson Barbata and Madeline Murphy Turner, “Making Waves: A Conversation with Laura Anderson Barbata,” Post: Notes on Art in a Global Context, Museum of Modern Art, January 20, 2021. https://post.moma. org/making-waves-a-conversation-with-laura-andersonbarbata/ 5. Claire Tancons, “Broadway to Biennial: A Carnival Timeline 1930-2015,” in EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean, ed. Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson (New York and New Orleans: Independent Curators International and the Contemporary Art Center, 2015).

6. In Aztec migration stories, Aztlán is a mythical homeland. During the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Aztlán was symbolically reclaimed. See this manifesto, for example: Rodolfo Gonzales and Alberto Urista [Alaurista, pseud.], “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” published at the first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, Denver, Colorado, March 1969; and in El grito del Norte, Alburquerque, July 6, 1969, 5.

7. For example, see: Buckjumping, directed by Lily Keber (USA: Mairzy Doats Productions, 2018), documentary film; Bruce Sunpie Barnes and Rachel Breunlin, Talk That Music Talk, (Center for the Book at the University of New Orleans, 2014); Ned Sublette, The Year Before the Flood (Chicago Review Press, 2009). All on a Mardi Gras Day, directed by Royce Osborn (USA: Spyboy Pictures, 2003), documentary film.

8. Edwin Buggage, “Voices of Congo Square: A True New Orleans Story, The Importance of the 300 Years Contribution of Blacks to the Crescent City,” New Orleans Data News Weekly, Mar 17-23, 2018, 2-3.

by regional artists, scholars and activists, via virtual live performance explorations and reciprocal exchanges that creatively expand our community.

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Opposite page: detail of Laura Anderson Barbata, Procesión de Alebrijes, 2011 - 2012

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COMMODITIES, COLONIALISM, CULTURE AND POWER

BY LAURA ROSANNE ADDERLEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND THE AFRICANA STUDIES PROGRAM AT TULANE UNIVERSITY

An exhibition focused on cotton cultivation,

the largest global producers today, and

cotton processing or cotton products

cane sugar remains an important crop in

anywhere in southern parts of the United

many other parts of the Americas where its

States would readily call to mind histories

cultivation was begun under colonial mono-

of racial slavery in this region. The historical

culture and slavery. While the United States

connections would be familiar to most

remains a significant producer of cotton for

people, even in places like New Orleans

global markets, since the ending of slavery

or south Louisiana where cotton never

in the 1860s the world cotton market has

dominated local agricultural economies.

seen enormous commercial production in

In southern Louisiana, as in many parts

diverse locations, including parts of Central

of the Caribbean and Latin America,

America in the mid-20th century. In the U.S.

sugarcane is the agricultural commodity

South, sharecropping and tenant farming

which serves as the strongest reminder of

run by unscrupulous former slaveholders

centuries of forced labor by Africans and

and their descendants disadvantaged

people of African descent. That labor took

African Americans into the mid-1900s.

place in difficult physical environments

Outside of the United States, other post-

and under harsh supervision by European

slavery systems of cotton production in the

colonizers and their European-American

Americas also involved labor exploitation

descendants. Black enslavement ended

and, frequently, the takeover of large

throughout the Americas during the 1800s,

amounts of land by external economic

but exploitative agricultural production

actors.

did not. Mistreatment of labor along with inequitable and environmentally harmful land usage related to the cultivation of both cotton and sugar continued well into the twentieth century, and in some places continues up to the present day.

For example, Brazil which became one of the largest producers of sugar during the years of colonial slavery remains among

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Over the past quarter century both cotton and sugar and have understandably received notable attention from academic and popular authors as well as from film makers and other artists drawing attention to the human costs involved in the production of these crops and related processed commodities. The role of U.S. multinational corporations in perpetuating

Laura Anderson Barbata with Don José Mendoza (stilts), Beto Ruiz (artisan), and Remigio Mestas (textiles), Semanta Santa (detail), 2012

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neo-colonial economic structures has

Americas, indigo production also regularly

often received particular critique, given

used captive African workers brought via

the professed national ideals of the United

the Atlantic slave trade. South Carolina had

States. In recent years, a dramatic public

the largest indigo output in colonial North

critique of the anti-black social costs of

America and numerous local histories of

sugarcane production came through a

that region highlight this crop as a part of

sculpture by Kara Walker, installed in a

their particular history of colonialism and

disused Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn,

racial exploitation. By contrast, in popular

New York. The piece called “A Subtlety or

imagination of the colonial histories of

the Amazing Sugar Baby” stood over 70-

Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean

feet tall and portrayed a woman of African

and Louisiana, indigo is often overlooked.

descent in a sphinx like position, wearing a head scarf and literally sugar-coated white.1

In a discussion of the attitudes of Spanish officials who were considering the

As an agricultural commodity connected

potential for developing colonial indigo

to colonialism, racism and slavery, indigo

production in Central America, Franciso

has had a much lower public profile. Yet

Rodríguez notes that “indigo was not a

indigo in fact played a notable role in

new product and therefore lacked the

numerous European colonial projects from

exotic value of many other commodities

the Americas to Asia over a long period

obtained in America.”2 Separate from

of time, from the 1500s to the 1900s.

the much larger scale of both sugar and

Attempts to make indigo a commercial

cotton production under European

success for imperial actors ranged from

colonialism and slavery, some popular

small efforts in Central America in the

awareness of the very long global history

1500s to later plantations in multiple

of indigo may also contribute to its less

places, whose success would compare

dramatic cultural association with specific

well with crops that played larger and

exploitative colonial and commercial

more widespread economic roles. French

histories between the seventeenth and

and British colonizers established indigo

twentieth centuries. Colorant usage

plantations in parts of the Caribbean and

by humans dates to antiquity.3 And, for

in southeastern North America during the

millennia, indigo has been used—and

1700s. British colonizers also produced

culturally or ritually appreciated—for its

commercial indigo in India in the late 1800s

blue dyeing capacity by societies in many

and early 1900s. At different times and in

parts of the world. Intervention: Indigo calls

different places, such indigo plantations

particular attention to the fact that some

seized land and coerced labor from

of the same American indigenous and

indigenous colonized peoples; and in the

African populations swept into imperial

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indigo economies after 1500 had their own

exhibition also invites consideration

production practices, and deep cultural

of the magic and striking quality of the

associations with the coloring capacity of

color itself and the regional histories to

this plant. Consider for example the history

which it is tied. The experience of South

of the coloring referred to as “Maya Blue”

Carolina is noteworthy here because

made by mixing indigo with a kind of clay.

during the expansion of indigo production

Scientists date the first usage of this in

and export in the mid 1700s, both

Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua and Guatemala

indigenous populations and newly arrived

to the first millennium of the common era,

enslaved Africans worked within the new

probably around 300 C.E.4 Similarly, dyed

agricultural and social worlds created

textiles generally and indigo specifically had

around that production. This mixture of

notable importance in many parts of West

African and indigenous populations in

Africa. In a 1978 essay, in part lamenting

the face of European colonial projects

the lack of attention by art historians to

was a common experience in many

textile and dyeing cultures in West Africa,

parts of the Americas at different times,

Mary Joseph cites examples from regions

although often under-appreciated in

located in modern Mali, Liberia, Sierra

compartmentalized considerations of

Leone, Nigeria and Cameroon. Joseph also

either African or First Nation histories in

notes the use of indigo in coloring wood.

this hemisphere. Intervention: Indigo resists

She especially emphasizes the wide range

that compartmentalization.

of ritual or otherwise culturally specific beliefs about the specialness or sacredness of both dyeing practices and the specific styles and patterns produced using indigo on fabric.5 In her study of South Carolina indigo production in the 1700s, Andrea Feeser points to the truly striking nature of indigo-derived blues, and the near “magical” quality of how the cloth material, after hours in the hot liquid indigo dyeing process, turns its final blue upon exposure to oxygen.6 Feeser thus emphasizes the specialness of indigo on its face, even beyond the fact that it was sometimes associated with things “regal or heavenly.”7 Laura Anderson Barbata in the present

Nevertheless, it must be noted that there was an overwhelming presence of indigenous labor in colonial indigo production in Mexico and Central America during the 1500s and 1600s. Meanwhile, the rise of British, French, and Dutch colonialism in the Caribbean led to indigo production on several islands during the 1700s, dominated there by enslaved African labor. Spanish colonial encounters in previous centuries had decimated Caribbean indigenous populations. French colonial Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean (now the Republic of Haiti) would become the largest regional indigo producer in the early 1700s. Adriana Catena

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Laura Anderson Barbata, Little Jaguar (detail), 2015, from Intervention: Indigo

emphasizes the role of European colonizers

North, Central and South America, and also

in the Americas during these centuries

in parts of the Caribbean where captive

in launching a global export-focused

African workers often formed majority

indigo trade which “spread technology

populations. These Africans lived with

and expertise” over time. Still, cultural

regularly absent European landowners,

communities around indigo production

and an indigenous population reduced to

continued to have many different local

tiny numbers within decades of European

forms.

arrival, through disease, mistreatment, and

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African and African-derived cultural uses of indigo have an intentionally prominent place in the current exhibition.

People of African descent ended up disproportionately at the bottom of the economic, social and racial hierarchies created by European colonialism in the Americas—in settler colonial societies in

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warfare. In most Caribbean colonies, high mortality rates among African captives led European colonizers to bring a continuous series of slave ships filled with African captives. Historians have documented the particular scale of the abuses of the Atlantic slavery system in the Caribbean, but have also marveled at the African-influenced cultural worlds which people created

under these circumstances. Anderson

should not be imagined as timeless or

Barbata’s work with stilt masqueraders in

unchanging.

Trinidad and Tobago and Brooklyn, New York has been among her most renowned collaborative projects in recent years. The most well-known named manifestation of this stilt masquerading form may be the “Moco Jumbies” who have appeared described by this name in Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the eastern Caribbean.9 In his book The Jumbies’ Playing Ground, Robert Nicholls notes the presence of stilt masquerading in numerous parts of West Africa, from which captives entered the Atlantic slave trade, including regions with their own indigo cultivation traditions.

But the most likely referent for the term “Mocko” “Moco” or “Moko” are the Moco people, an Ibibio group of southeastern Nigeria. Most African diaspora cultures from the era of the Atlantic slave trade took influences from multiple West and West-Central African communities, so the name should not at all imply a narrow or specific origin for this ritual and performative practice. In considering exchanges of culture around the Atlantic, historian Frederick Knight also reminds us to think about multi-directional influences on indigo-related cultures during the era of the Atlantic slave. That is, not only must we consider Africans, some familiar with indigo arriving in the Americas, but we must also consider the impact of products from European commerce—notably new textiles—entering African environments.10 Indigo-related cultures in West Africa

In Intervention: Indigo the “Moco Jumbies” serve as signifiers of the commercial and cultural importance of Americas-wide indigo cultivation and the colonial, cultural and racial hierarchies to which indigo became connected over the past five hundred years. In both West Africa and the Caribbean, the tall height of stiltwalkers, their face masking and costume coloring all invoked different ideas about supernatural or spiritual power. As Mary Joseph notes in her essay on indigo textile design, “The meaning of designs can only be interpreted in the framework of the cultures in which they operated.” Nicholls describes the costuming of contemporary Moco Jumbies in the eastern Caribbean as being “influenced by certain basic factors— aesthetics, the spiritual nature of the genre, utilitarian considerations, the context for the performance and cultural authenticity.”

Anderson Barbata might add to this list, the capacity of the figure to invoke literally colorful and sometimes overlooked histories. Indigo certainly had ritual and spiritual meanings for Africans and American First Nations, and noteworthy economic and social importance around the Americas from the 1500s to the 1700s. In south Louisiana, the rise of sugar displaced much of what local indigo cultivation there was in the 1700s. Similar to such displacement from the land by other agricultural pursuits, indigo has often

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been displaced by many public histories of colonialism and slavery. The “magical” color explored in this exhibition provoke some unforgetting of those regional indigo histories.

Anderson Barbata also pointedly argues for some writing of new histories. This essay began noting that cotton and sugar have a far greater automatic connection with slavery in the public imagination than any other crops or commodities, despite the fact that captive African and Africandescended workers performed all kinds of labor in many other spheres. In the

Janet Best ed. Colour Design: Theories and Applications, Second Edition, (Oxford, UK: Elsevier Ltd, 2017): 557-587, doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-101270-3.00024-2.

4. See: Kenneth Chang, “The Grim Story of Maya Blue” The New York Times, Feb 28, 2008, https://www.nytimes. com/2008/02/29/science/29bluew.html; and Manuel Sánchez Del Río, Antonio Doménech, María Teresa Doménech-Carbó, María Luisa Vázquez de Agredos Pascual, Mercedes Suárez, and Emilia García-Romero, The Maya Blue Pigment in Emilio Galàn and Arieh Singer eds. Developments in Palyforskite-Sepiolite Research, Volume 3 (Oxford, UK: Elsevier Ltd, 2011), doi:10.1016/B978-0-444-536075.00018-9.

5. Marietta B.Joseph, “West African Indigo Cloth.”

African Arts 11, no. 2 (1978): 34-95. https://doi. org/10.2307/3335446. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3335446.

6. Andrea Feeser, Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013) pp. 1-2.

contemporary public imagination in the

7. Feeser, Red, White, and Black Make Blue, p. 23.

United States and much of the western

8. Adrianna Catena, “Indigo in the Atlantic World.” In Encyclopedia, (Oxford University Press, 2018).

world, people most often see the color indigo in either blue jeans or the clothing of uniformed state authorities, most notably the police.11 On the relationship between those blue-uniformed state authorities and the descendants of Africans brought to the Americas through systems of slavery and imperialism, Anderson Barbata expressly invites serious conversations about this blue color, about power and the consequences of distinct histories for people of African descent.

1. Roberta Smith, “Sugar? Sure, but Salted with Meaning” The New York Times, May 11, 2014, https://www.nytimes. com/2014/05/12/arts/design/a-subtlety-or-the-marveloussugar-baby-at-the-domino-plant.html 2. Francisco Zamora Rodríguez, “Central American Indigo.

Globalization and Socioeconomic Effects (16 th-17th Centuries),” Análise Social 52, no. 224 (2017): 587, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/44392798.

3. A. Abel, “Chapter 24 - The History of Dyes and Pigments: From Natural Dyes to High Performance Pigments” in

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9. Robert Wyndham Nicholls, The Jumbies’ Playing Ground Old World Influences on Afro-Creole Masquerades in the Eastern Caribbean (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), pp. 158-159.

10. Frederick Knight, “In an Ocean of Blue: West African Indigo Workers in the Atlantic World to 1800” in Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1650-1850 (New York: NYU Press, 2010), p. 87-110.

11. Most commercial indigo coloring for clothing now is produced through chemical synthetic processes, although there has been some recent attention to returning to more natural and environmentally sound processes. See for example: Emily Matchar, “Have Scientists Found a Greener Way to Make Blue Jeans” Smithsonianmag.com, January 22, 2018, Further Reading Adrianna Catena, “Indigo in the Atlantic World” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Published online: 26 February 2018. https://doi.org.libproxy.tulane.edu/10.1093/ acrefore/9780199366439.013.494.

Andrea Feeser. Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013.

Frederick Knight, “In an Ocean of Blue: West African Indigo Workers in the Atlantic World to 1800” in Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1650-1850. New York: NYU Press, 2010.

Laura Anderson Barbata, Happy Suit (detail), 2008

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INTERVIEW WITH LAURA ANDERSON BARBATA CONDUCTED IN MARCH 2021 BY EDITH WOLFE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE STONE CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES AT TULANE UNIVERSITY.

Edith Wolfe (EW): I’d like to start just by

It was also informed by my collaborations in

talking about the term “Transcommunality.”

Trinidad and Tobago and with the Brooklyn

It has an immediate connotation of working

Jumbies. I wanted to expand this project

beyond the conventional borders of

and work in my own country, Mexico. I knew

community from the prefix, “trans”, but

that there was stilt dancing in Mexico; it is

“transcommunality”—and even the notion of

represented on pre-Columbian pottery, in the

communality—isn’t that familiar to me. How

Popul Vuh but I did not know where it was still

did the notion of “trans-communality” come

practiced. In 2009, I was invited with Najja

to you?

Codrington, one of the founders of the Brooklyn

Laura Anderson Barbata (LAB): I needed to find a title for a book on my work with different stilt dancing communities—Over 10 years, I had worked in Trinidad and Tobago with the Keylemanjahro School of Arts and Culture Moko Jumbies, in Mexico with the Zancudos

Jumbies, to participate in the international experimental dance festival Prisma Forum, in Oaxaca. Coincidentally, the festival corresponded with the annual procession of Oaxacan stilt dancers, the Zancudos de Zaachila.

de Zaachila and in New York with the Brooklyn

Najja and I met with the Zancudos de Zaachila,

Jumbies. At the core of this work, are authentic

and we were later invited to join them during

long-term personal working relationships with

the processions and also perform with them.

an honest connection and commitment that is

Neither knew of the other’s existence, or even

built through dialogue and reciprocity.

of stilt dancing in that particular geography.

A friend who is a critic was helping me review the book materials and transcommunality came up in the conversation and I said, “That’s it! That’s the title!” Transcommunality refers to crossing borders fluidly and respectfully.

It does not recognize set geographical limits of a practice, and it expands as we create a

Dragon in Trinidad and Tobago didn’t know there was stilt dancing in Mexico and in Mexico they didn’t know about the practice in Trinidad and Tobago or New York. Yet this practice united them. I saw geographical borders and language barriers disolving and relationships built based on mutual respect: transcommunality.

reciprocal exchange of ideas, of thought, of

EW: Your work demonstrates how

experiences, of history.

recognizing these shared traditions

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creates new understandings of community.

passion for the tradition and a commitment to

But cultural traditions are also a way to

caring for it.

distinguish an existing community, to build internal cohesion, and stake claim to difference. Do these functions coexist in Transcommunality?

EW: Your descriptions invoke a respect for the creativity and contemporaneity of these artists, which I think is often denied “folk culture.” We often fetishize “tradition”

LAB: Thank you for bringing that up. Through

as some static, timeless thing, outside the

collaboration, each group actually becomes

dialectics of history. But your work seems

more committed and stronger in their own

to navigate the tension between artisanal

tradition. In many cases, there are very strict

traditions and what might generally be

rituals that must be followed. For example, in the

called “modern” artistic innovation very

processions in Oaxaca the Jumbies dressed like

comfortably.

the Zancudos, as they were asked. Through this sharing the Zancudos’s tradition was actually reinforced. Through their work with the Jumbies, the Zancudos became more committed to their own tradition. Collaboration rekindled the

LAB: I think our stilts are a great example.

In Oaxaca, the Zancudos traditionally use an exposed wood stilt that is tied with wire and leather, attached to the foot and under the knee. In West Africa, in contrast, the stilt

Above stilts (left to right: Masks / Mascaras, Jícaras, Columns / Columnas, Life and Death / Vida y muerte, Cactus, Jicalpextles, and Velas de concha) created by Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with Don José Mendoza and Jesús Sosa Calvo, Juana Ortega Fuentes, Olegario Hernández, Oscar Vazquez, Vicente Matías Fabián, Juana Venegas, Paula Sánchez, Florencio Fuentes, Petronilo Vazquez, Petra Mendoza, Viviana Alaves, and Guillermina Ruiz in 2012.

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must be completely covered, the hands are

traditions on to stilts that ultimately would be

covered—everything is covered. The exposed

used in the closing processions of the Zancudos

stilt in Oaxaca was, to me an invitation. I felt

de Zaachilla and the Brooklyn Jumbies. I met

that for an artisan, it could be an opportunity to

with the jicalpextle artisans and they said, “Just

integrate their own tradition into that space.

give us the stilts and we’ll paint them.” I met with

When we started our collaboration with the Zancudos, I was also interested in the richness of Oaxaca’s many artisan and craft communities, the diversity of which is incredible.

I made a list of the different artisanal traditions typical of Oaxaca: the rich and various textile traditions, the beautiful widely used bowls made

alebrije master artisans who showed me their work and I showed them the stilts. After many conversations and reunions, they began to work on the stilts and created a dialogue between the stilts themselves: one stilt for example has devils and the other angels; another one is day, and its pair is night—always representing duality.

from gourds called jicalpextles for drinking

I also met with a wonderful master restorer who

cacao (which are either red or blue with little

was working on a church altar piece. He said,

flowers on them), and alebrijes (brightly colored

“Oh, absolutely, I’m interested. But I want to do

wood sculptures of fantastical creatures). I had

the whole thing. I want to start from scratch and

also visited many colonial churches undergoing

make the stilts too.” He only wanted to know

massive restoration projects involving Novo

the stilt requirements and asked me to return a

Hispano techniques (16th century architecture

few months later. He not only carved both of the

of New Spain) utilizing gold and silver leaf and

stilts but also painted and covered them with

painting.

gold and silver leaf.

I began to meet with artisans to ask if they

EW: I want to talk about Intervention: Indigo

would be interested in incorporating their

because that project also engages artisanal legacies but with much more urgent moral and political overtones. I find the project so complex in its engagement with indigo as a metaphor of indigenous and African cultural retentions and the repressive systems that disseminated and controlled this resource and these cultures: colonialism, chattel slavery, environmental

Laura Anderson Barbata, selections from Intervention: Indigo, 2015-2020

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exploitation and policing. It

Left to right: Laura Anderson Barbata, Julia and Laura / Julia y Laura, 2013; Laura Anderson Barbata, Julia Pastrana thinking of Daphne / Julia Pastrana pensando en Daphne, 2010; Laura Anderson Barbata with Rafael Esquer, Julia Pastrana: Su vuelta y sus ra ces / Returning to her roots, 2013

charges the color with both emancipatory

the color while reminding viewers of the original

and repressive connotations.

protective significance of the color. My interest

LAB: I would say that the reason it can inhabit both spaces is because it is a color that is 4000

is to create a work that invites you to explore the layered meanings embedded in the intervention.

years old, traditionally associated with royalty,

EW: Before we run out of time, we need to

wisdom, and protection, and has been used all

talk a about Julia Pastrana. I know you’re

around the world. It resonates deep within us.

reluctant to call the repatriation of her

It also refers to colonial abuse of power and the

remains to Mexico “art,” but the participation

enslavement of people, as this crop was very

of the community and what it symbolized to

profitable in the southern United States. It is

the region and to women in Mexico reflect

also the color of many police uniforms around

many of the defining attributes of social

the world. Through the act of the intervention

practice art. How do you see it?

we occupied public space to demand justice and to protest police violence towards BIPOC people wearing the color that has repressed them, but also a color embedded with powerful symbolism and ritual. The intervention seeks to reclaim and invoke the traditional power of

LAB: Julia Pastrana commanded an audience and she still does. To answer as briefly as I can, I felt that it was something I had to do. I wasn’t the first to petition for her to be removed from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo, to be

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repatriated, and buried in Mexico. I’m an artist,

her death, her body was commodified. Julia

and perhaps because of my collaborative,

Pastrana´s repatriation and burial was very, very

transcommunal lens I was successful.

moving.

I had to work closely with the governor of

For those who couldn’t attend, I had started

Sinaloa, the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores

“Una flor para Julia” (A flower for Julia). We

of Mexico (Department of Foreign Affairs),

contacted flower distributors that would sell

repatriation services, and the Ministry of

flowers nonprofit and created a website where

Culture for example. Her repatriation crossed

you could donate for flowers. The tradition is

and integrated many spheres: political, cultural,

that mourners place flowers on the casket as it

international policy, Human Rights, and let us

descends into the grave. A truckload of white

not forget that Julia was an artist, so it is also

delphiniums arrived! There were so many

about art.

flowers that we couldn’t put them all on top of

She was born in Santiago de Ocoroni in Sinaloa, a very small town. For indigenous people, especially Indigenous women, it was important

her casket and had to put the rest on her tomb.

Those flowers represented people from all around the world saying “Ni una mas.”

that she be buried in their land. Cemeteries

EW: Oh, that’s stunning. So I don’t want to

don’t have walls around them in Ocoroni,

keep you much longer. But my concluding

graves across the state are continually robbed,

question is about how hard it must be to be

and cartels control that area. To bury Julia in

social distancing when your work is about

Ocoroni would have put her in danger of being

community. So my question is just what have

victimized again. We chose the closest town to

you been doing besides making mountains of

where she was born with the infrastructure to

masks in your isolation?

protect her, Sinaloa de Leyva.

LAB: Especially at first, I was furiously making

I grew up in Sinaloa; it is a state that welcomes

masks and I continue to make and deliver

and loves their people, and Sinaloa embraced

masks. Homeless shelters are still in dire need

her. It was an opportunity to care for one of

of them.

its own in a state that has been impacted by violence, drug cartels, and corruption.

When her casket arrived in Sinaloa de Leyva hundreds of people were there. Women held signs saying “Ni una mas.” [“Not one more,” the dictum of Mexico’s movement to stop violence against women.] She was a victim of human traffic, domestic abuse, and scientific exploitation during her life; and even after 23

EW: So, it took the place of your creative output?

LAB: I think more than anything the pandemic fueled what has triggered all my work, which is a sense of duty to respond. I had to do Intervention: Indigo, I had to do Intervention: Wall Street, I had to do everything I could for Julia to be repatriated. I had to make masks.

Top: Laura Anderson Barbata, COVID-19 Face Coverings, 2020; Bottom: Laura Anderson Barbata, April 2020, New York.

Photo by Stefan Falke. Courtesy of the artists.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Edith Wolfe, Ph.D. is Assistant Director of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies.

Her research focuses on the transnational dialogues and intercultural exchanges that influenced the development of early twentieth-century avant-garde modernism, approached through the art and experience of Latin Americans. Before coming to the Center, Wolfe taught in Tulane’s Art History Department and co-curated the exhibition Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in Latin American Drawing at UT Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art. More recently, she has directed the advanced students in her course “Women, Community and the Arts in Latin America” to collaborate with Newcomb Art Museum’s curatorial team on two exhibition projects highlighting artists and activists from Oaxaca (2020) and Puerto Rico (2017). Wolfe’s writing has appeared in The Art Bulletin, The Art Journal, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture , KulturConfusão: On GermanBrazilian Interculturalities (De Gruyter, 2015) and Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (MoMA, 2019).

Laura Rosanne Adderley, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Tulane University, and she works primarily as a comparative slavery historian focusing particularly on the 19th century, and the era of slave trade abolition and emancipation.

Her current book project, Practicing Emancipation: Slave Ship Survivors, Atlantic Abolition, and the Everyday Politics of Freedom, focuses on the earliest Africans rescued from illegally operating slave ships and re-settled by British colonial authorities between 1807 and 1819, mostly in Antigua, the Bahamas and Tortola. She authored the 2006 book “New Negroes from Africa” : Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the NineteenthCentury Caribbean, co-winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize for African Diaspora History.

Adderley earned a BA in History from Yale, an MA in History from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D in History also from University of Pennsylvania.

Laura Blereau is the Curator and Coordinator of Academic Programming at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, where she works on exhibitions that highlight women artists, socially engaged art practices, and a collection that contextualizes the birthplace of Newcomb Pottery. Her recent projects include “Laura Anderson Barbata: Transcommunality” (2021), “Brandan ‘Bmike’ Odums: Not Supposed 2-Be Here” (2020), the traveling group exhibition “Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women in Louisiana“ (2019), and “Fallen Fruit: Empire” (2018). Previously Blereau served as Curator of the Hilliard University Art Museum, a 12,000 square foot exhibition space at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she initiated a series of single-channel video art exhibitions and curated a wide range of projects including the kinetic sculpture exhibit “Lin Emery: A Movement, 1957-2017.“ She holds a BFA from LSU and an MFA in New Forms from Pratt Institute.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST I am a bicultural, transdisciplinary artist. Since 1992 I have developed sustainable art-centered projects that integrate collaborative and participatory work that address issues of social justice and the environment. As a Mexican born, New York based artist, it is my belief that a shared artistic social practice can serve as a platform on which we connect, learn, exchange, create, and transcend borders in order to activate our sense of belonging to a global community. My work seeks to further the expectations of socially-engaged art by involving collaborators such as archives, scientists, activists, musicians, street dancers, and artisans to create works that operate both inside and outside of the art world. Since 2001 I began to work with stilt dancers in Trinidad and Tobago, and since 2007 have consistently collaborated with the Brooklyn Jumbies, and in 2012 with the Zancudos de Zaachila from Oaxaca, Mexico. The work combines character and narrative development with numerous collaborators in addition to textile arts, sculpture, dance, masking, music, procession, improvisation, ritual and protest.

– Laura Anderson Barbata

ABOUT THE MUSEUM The Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University builds on the Newcomb College legacy of education, social enterprise, and artistic experience. Presenting inspiring exhibitions and programs that engage communities both on and off campus, the museum fosters the creative exchange of ideas and cross-disciplinary collaborations around innovative art and design. The museum preserves and advances scholarship on the Newcomb and Tulane art collections.

The academic institution for which the museum is named was founded in 1886 as the first degree-granting coordinate college for women in America. The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was distinguished for educating women in the sciences, physical education, and, most importantly, art education. Out of its famed arts program, the Newcomb Pottery was born. In operation from 1895 until 1940, the Newcomb enterprise produced metalwork, fiber arts, and the now internationally renowned Newcomb pottery.

The museum today presents original exhibitions and programs that explore socially engaged art, civic dialogue, and community transformation. The museum also pays tribute to its heritage through shows that recognize the contributions of women to the fields of art and design.

As an entity of an academic institution, the Newcomb Art Museum creates exhibitions that utilize the critical frameworks of diverse disciplines in conceptualizing and interpreting art and design. By presenting issues relevant to Tulane and the greater New Orleans region, the museum also serves as a gateway between on and off campus constituencies.

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Public programs associated with this exhibition are funded in part under a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are also supported in part by a New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Community Partnership Grant and by a Community Arts Grant made possible by the City of New Orleans.

Newcomb’s educational programs are supported by The Helis Foundation.

Tulane University 6823 St. Charles Avenue New Orleans, LA 70118 NewcombArtMuseum.Tulane.edu 504.865.5328