The Heat Is On

We are well into August, and things are really heating up here at the Brooklyn Museum. Six artists will be coming to the Museum this week to install their works for Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art – joining us from as nearby as Manhattan, and as far away as Haiti, Curacao, and Suriname! With just 18 days until the opening of this exhibition, we are moving quickly.

Last week we welcomed Charles Campbell, a Jamaican-born artist living in Canada, who was here to install his work Aperture – Middle Passage. The installation of this work began with a transparency, which the artist first projected onto a wall (see image below):

Artist Charles Campbell centers the projection of his work Aperture – Middle Passage.

Once projected and sized, the image was painted directly onto the wall using tempera paint. It is roughly 13 feet high and took the artist three days to complete.

Campbell paints the projected image onto the wall.

Using geometric patterns and symmetry in this piece, Campbell fuses the image of the mandala, the traditional Buddhist and Hindu symbol associated with harmony and equilibrium, with that of a slave ship, representing violence and suffering. In combining these two opposing ideas, Campbell’s work aims to confront and reconcile the past.

Detail from Charles Campbell’s Aperture – Middle Passage.

I won’t show you the finished work – yet. You’ll have to visit the exhibition to see it….