CURATING CARNIVAL?: PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART AND THE PARADOX OF PERFORMANCE ART IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Abstract

The article presents past and present efforts to address Carnival as an artistic and curatorial object, discusses attending discourses that support these efforts and offers this author's own contribution to the debate and practice of Carnival as a scholar and curator. While "Curating Carnival" attends to Carnival in the Caribbean and its European and American diasporas, with particular attention paid to the Trinidad Carnival model or mas', and the legacy of Peter Minshall's work or roadworks, it ultimately addresses general concerns about the construction of so-called performance art as a Eurocentric concept within the context of contemporary art and of contemporary Caribbean art as a predominantly visual arts field, both of which, performance art within mainstream contemporary art, and contemporary Caribbean art, fail to recognize the potency and currency of Carnival and other related vernacular performance practices as art forms. "Curating Carnival" also puts curating under scrutiny and advocates for an experimental approach to the object of Carnival with the procession as an alternative curatorial medium.