BRATTLEBORO-A diverse body of artwork by Guyanese-American artist Carl E. Hazlewood is currently on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC). "Infinite Passage" includes 50 of Hazlewood's mixed-media paintings, drawings, and installations, in which the artist explores themes such as the passage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic and the landscapes and seascapes in Guyana.
Hazlewood will discuss the exhibition in an online conversation hosted by BMAC on Tuesday, June 3, at 7 p.m. He will be joined by co-curator Serubiri Moses and Rinaldo Walcott, chair of Africana and American Studies at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies among other titles.
Admission to the online talk, titled "Folklore as Modernism," is free, but advance registration is required. To register, visit brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124, ext. 101.
On view at BMAC until July 6, "Infinite Passage" is a partially site-specific project that touches on the historical origins of BMAC's building, a former train station that embodies the idea of movement, which Hazlewood calls "an inescapable part of our existence," specifically as it relates to the movement of enslaved Africans from the continent of Africa to the Americas.
"The exhibition positions Hazlewood's artwork as conceptual guide and a form of inquiry, focusing on ideas of landscape, the aforementioned movement, the trickster figure of African diaspora folklore known as Anansi, and seeing paintings as constructions," according to Moses and co-curator, K. Anthony Jones.
"In viewing 'Infinite Passage,' we perceive these somewhat divergent lines of inquiry not as chaotic but as parts of a whole. The exhibition ushers us into a world that is both in disarray and made coherent by Hazlewood's thought and his art," they say.
In Hazlewood's work, landscapes can be real places, such as the plantation where he was born Guyana. They can also be imaginary, such as those inspired by novels he read as a child: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift and The Water Babies: Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, by Charles Kingsley.
Hazlewood's work includes the narrative that Black folklore is a reflection of the colonized subject.
In connection with "Infinite Passage," Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children's Theater will present "Anansi, the Trickster Spider: A West African Folktale" on Sunday, June 15, at 11:30 a.m. at BMAC. For details, visit brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124, ext. 101.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.