Dainesha Nugent-Palache

5 Sep

1. Faux Mo, 2018

2. A House Standing Where it Should Have Fallen, 2019

25 Oct

Future Portraits is an ongoing body of work which aims to envision Femme BIPOC artists in the future, as a means of combatting erasure, and as a tool for posterity.

Out of Many One Story (2015)

A sound/ video component of the photographic series Come Brown Come Brown, Come Black Come Black. This video work highlights the similarities various Diasporic Afro Caribbean women (of various ages), have experienced regarding their own perceptions of beauty, and those imposed onto them—often via the matriarch and always containing evidence of colonial conditioning.

16 Sep

High Yellow, 2015.
Redbone, 2015.
Black as Tar, 2015.

I found myself interested in the language used to describe a person’s skin colour, especially with respect to black skin, and how the phrases that are often used reinforce colourism, through their relations to the inanimate objects associated with these terms. The phrases Redbone, High Yellow, and Black as Tar are represented visually, in quite a literal manner; my intent is for the linguistic terms to correlate with the images which personally come to mind whenever the terms are used. What’s interesting is, the hierarchal values which are placed upon skin tone is evident in the word used to describe various shades of black skin. Tar calls to mind negative associations due to its messy utilitarian nature, and is associated with darker skin tones, where as high yellow (a term used to describe lighter shades of black skin), seems to speak almost directly to the high esteem placed upon this skin tone.

3 Jul

From Come Brown Come Brown, Come Black Come Black, 2015. Epson archival Inkjet Prints on Diabond (20" x 20")

“Out of many one people” is the motto displayed on the Jamaican coat of arms, an ode to the multitude of bodies who account for the various races, shades, and origins which compose the island’s populous; out of the many people who make up the Jamaican identity, one standard of whiteness is preferred.

Come Brown Come Brown; Come Black Come Black is an exploration of how the psyches of contemporary Afro-Jamaican women are still heavily influenced by their colonial past, and the simultaneous struggle they engage in to restore lost traditions. I explore this notion through performative self-portraitures, video works, and audio, which together illustrate how the modes of beauty and aesthetics considered to be idiosyncratic indicators of Jamaican cultural authenticity, together form a culture entangled within paradox and dichotomy. This body of work also seeks to acknowledge the true meaning of cultural authenticity—if any—in regards to Jamaican culture, when Jamaica is an island composed of diasporic bodies and amalgamated cultures.