"Jaguar"
12" x 12" x 3"
bread, elastic hair bands, mirror, wood, resin (detail)

© 2000 Che Lovelace

© 2000 Mariel Brown

Consuming Culture

In his latest body of work Che Lovelace continues to expand upon themes he has developed over the last several years. Overall this work has been marked by an exploration of the ways in which people in the Caribbean live their lives both at a distance from and intimately connected to larger and more powerful nations such as the United States. But Lovelace has never been one for the easy or facile commentary.

The relationship of dependency here is not represented simply as the political and economic subservience of a small nation to a larger one, with the expected images of a kind of "new colonialism". Lovelace deals with these issues with a welcome degree of subtlety and a sly sense of humour. What emerges, then, is a series of pieces that demonstrate an understanding of the complexities and sometimes contradictory effects that this sort of political economic dependency produces. Specifically, Lovelace is concerned with the idea of consumption as a strategy for personal and in some ways psychological development and identity formation on the individual level as well as the ways in which consumption becomes part of nationalist ideology while remaining a visible marker of the compromises nation building must make to global economic development. What we have, then, is a kind of layering with consumption as the unifying theme. Lovelace waves these themes together, never losing sight of the fact that consumption, while perpetuating certain kinds of dependency, also represents agency on the individual level. What is refreshing about the work is that it refuses to pass judgement.

A wonderful example from this latest collection can be found in what Lovelace has called his "medallion" paintings. In one particular piece Lovelace depicts a large, blackboard-like image. Adhered to this larger backdrop are a series of medallions showing a student (Lovelace himself) asleep at a desk in a classroom. Behind the student is another blackboard which seems to be registering in chalk what the student at the desk is dreaming. Images of model beauty (girls with mixed but noticeably Euro features) a Christian religious image, a Caribbean youth dressed in partial imitation of a North American hip hop style but standing on an obviously Caribbean beach. And finally, a flag reminiscent of the American flag but instead of stars in the box above the stripes we see the diagonal stripe of the Trinidadian flag. At some level, the following issues are being intertwined here:

1. We see the blackboard as a repository for and a marker of official knowledge and the production of education.
2. The student’s identity, his very consciousness (and here unconscious) is ineluctably formed by his relationship to this educational system while
3. This system is itself based upon and formed through a broad relationship not merely with a post-colonial academic system, but with consumption, capitalism, and the media.

The student, then, experiences power quite indirectly through what he has come to understand as knowledge. But this would be unsatisfying if what we were looking at was a condemnation of the system as colonial, alien and purely oppressive. In such cases, work of this nature seems to assume that there is a genuine identity being displaced by the foreign one. Lovelace, quite nicely, is telling us that the identities that result from this kind of interaction are not purely Caribbean or American, that a space in which sure pure concepts can exist is a fiction. What is not a fiction is that for young people in a place like Trinidad, local and global images can exist next to each other and produce desires and dreams that transcend simple dichotomies.

This, then, becomes a central preoccupation with much of the rest of Lovelace’s new work as well. In one series Lovelace has constructed boxes much like the ones vendors on the street in Port of Spain use to display inexpensive wares that they are selling. Emblazoned on the glass are larger symbols of foreign wealth in the form of automobile logos (Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, etc). The logos themselves are constructed out of beans and other edible materials. Again we have consumption being played with here. On the strictly literal level, of course, the Lexus logo is consumable.. But the dichotomy and interplay that is established between what can actually be purchased, eaten, digested by locals and what the dreams of consumption produce creates a dynamic work of tension.

Lovelace always captures that unresolved interplay of local and global with interesting, playful and often humourous images and media. By refusing to be a political stalwart the work never descends into pious didacticism, but retains a sense of pathos and beauty that is seductive and, perhaps most rewarding, full of hope.

Philip Scher

Swim
“In this recent body of work I continue my ongoing research, working with various materials and modes of expression. I am particularly interested in how this eclectic, but none-the-less, structured approach serves as a conceptual framework for exploring the incredible diversity of information that has come to define the experience of living in our age, and perhaps more specifically – living in this Caribbean, New World region. Through the language with which I have been working, I seek to record and index a range of identities articulated through photographed self portrayals, which are combined with painted images; in the main, these reflect my perspective of everyday life experiences. I believe ‘ordinary’ actions of the everyday become the backbone and link to a complex construction of our identity.”

Che Lovelace 2000

Swim was displayed in the Exhibition Space at CCA7 from September 21st to October 21st, 2000.

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