Sugar's Traces: How two women artists use sugar, water, and other elements to shed light on environmental justice in the Caribbean
About this event:
Sugar production and consumption in the Caribbean is inextricably linked to a history of colonization, with lasting impacts on environmental issues and gender dynamics today. In what ways do two Caribbean women artists express the relationship between sugar's colonial history, environment, and gender? What role can women artists play in larger environmental and climate justice movements in the Caribbean? In this virtual panel, Dr. Myriam Chancy (novelist and professor) and Andrea Chung (visual artist) will speak to how they use sugar in their work to shed light on larger environmental issues in Haiti and Jamaica.
About the speakers:
Dr. Myriam J. A. Chancy will speak on "Harvesting Haiti: Unnatural Disasters". She is a Guggenheim Fellow and Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College. Her Guggenheim-sponsored monograph, Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony and Transmission in the African Diaspora, was published in 2020 with the University of Illinois Press and her novel on the Haiti earthquake, What Storm, What Thunder, is forthcoming from HarperCollins, Canada and TinHouse USA.
Andrea Chung will discuss her use of sugar in her visual art that focuses on colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Her recent biennale and museum exhibitions include Prospect 4, New Orleans and the Jamaican Biennale, Kingston, Jamaica, as well as the Chinese American Museum and California African American Museum in Los Angeles, and the San Diego Art Institute.
This virtual panel is the inaugural convening for the digital humanities platform, Ecologies Entrelacées, which examines intersections of gender and critical ecology in the Caribbean. Visit the site to learn how to get involved and sign up for our mailing lists.
Cosponsors: The Columbia University Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality & the Barnard Center for Research on Women
Future events will convene on the following themes: beaches, bananas, gardens.
Questions regarding this event can be sent to Rachel Kirk at [email protected].
