Stories for Post-Coloniality: Memorias, Cimarronas, & Un Quilombo Tropical (Maroon Memories)

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 discuss a research-driven project that incorporates ceramics, video, and sound. The project 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:
- International Affairs Program
- Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program
- Black Studies Program
- MDOCS
- 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.

Residencies and programs include:
- The Shed
- Smack Mellon (Van Lier Fellow)
- MuseumsQuartier Vienna
- Kovent Catalonia
- Silver Arts Project at the World Trade Center

Recognition and exhibitions include:
- CIFO, the NALAC Fund for the Arts, and the Centro León Jiménez Biennial (Cádiz, Spain cultural immersion prize)
- Fellowship in Martinique through the Tropiques Atrium Caribbean art program
- Exhibitions at Documenta 15, Tribeca Artists Award Program, Hudson River Museum, Museum of Latin American Art, NADA Art Fair, and 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.