Open Collections

Bridgemohan, Michaela

University of British Columbia

“Oleaginous duppy: alternate paths of connection through immaterial to material making” is a support paper that explores the multiplicity and multi-dimensionality embedded in Black diasporic identity through ontological Caribbean folk being, duppy, who was transmitted to me through my father. As an individual who belongs to two different groups—Jamaican and Australian—while occupying in Canada, I explore how duppy’s corporal nature becomes an inspiration to hybrid, liminal sensibilities. I weave personal anecdotes with Caribbean scholars Stuart Hall and Edouard Glissant’s literary works to unpack the ambivalent relations associated with duppy. This autoethnographic approach locates myself into these histories and connections that are necessary to reveal duppy as an embodiment, tethered to forbidden realms of “Other,” a non-essentialist and spiritually ‘taboo.’ Scholars Charmaine A. Nelson, Macarena Gomez-Barris, Kathrine McKittrick, Ralina L. Joseph, and Montré Aza Missouri and authors Dionne Brand, Erna Brodber, all contribute to this unpacking. Transitioning from immaterial legacies to material relations, I refer to culturally informed cooking and grooming practices as ways of making that induce cultural sustenance as emergent potentials to manifest duppy. I connect this process to scholar Christina Sharpe’s concept of ‘wake work’ as an evocative reflection of how cultural rituals sustain memories and connect us with our ancestors. By incorporating my personal experiences in cooking with my father and personal grooming, I employ these relational practices as methodical steps toward creative ritualistic making. By recognizing that consideration for the Land and beings is deeply ingrained in Jamaican customs, the artistic production with Indigo and wood is discussed as more than material mediums, but as material beings, who I collaborate with. To imbue wood with Indigo transfigures their surface as more than a singular entity. The thesis exhibition and the support paper are what I see as an heirloom of these discourses and concepts.

Text

2022-08-05

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82279

Visual Arts

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/