Ray Funk

Lau­ra An­der­son Bar­ba­ta’s Transcom­mu­nal­i­ty is a stun­ning new art ex­hib­it at the New­comb Gallery at Tu­lane Uni­ver­si­ty in New Or­leans which will be open un­til Oc­to­ber 2. De­spite the pan­dem­ic or maybe be­cause of it, this ex­hib­it has a strong on­line pres­ence with an amaz­ing vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty pre­sen­ta­tion. You can see every ob­ject up close, read every la­bel on the wall, see most of the videos, and ex­pe­ri­ence a se­ries of ex­hib­it re­lat­ed zoom events, and record­ed round ta­ble dis­cus­sions as well as a de­tailed cat­a­logue and short video pre­sen­ta­tions for younger view­ers.

This is the first ex­hib­it that looks back on 30 years of Lau­ra An­der­son Bar­ba­ta’s artis­tic work though she has had ex­hibits of her work at col­leges and mu­se­ums around the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co and been part of group shows. Her art­work has tak­en her around the globe with an em­pha­sis on both so­cial jus­tice and col­lab­o­ra­tion. She took on a mul­ti-year ef­fort for the repa­tri­a­tion for tra­di­tion­al bur­ial in Mex­i­co of the body of a mis­treat­ed 19th Cen­tu­ry Mex­i­can per­former Ju­lia Pas­trana whose body had been em­balmed and on ex­hib­it for a long pe­ri­od in Nor­way.

The pri­ma­ry fo­cus of the ex­hib­it has a par­tic­u­lar link to Trinidad Car­ni­val. Bar­ba­ta has worked with Moko Jumbies and oth­er stilt dancers in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. She first came to Trinidad to do a com­mu­ni­ty pa­per mak­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion in Grand Riv­iere and at­tend­ed the 2002 Car­ni­val. Then she worked with Drag­on and the Kil­a­man­jaro Moko Jumbies of Co­corite. From 2003 to 2007, she made their cos­tumes—she prefers the term “wear­able sculp­ture” and worked on the band’s Car­ni­val pre­sen­ta­tions.

Her cos­tumes were stun­ning. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Stephan Falke was present dur­ing those years and his book Moko Jumbies re­mains an amaz­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of that pe­ri­od of her work. An ex­cel­lent Ger­man doc­u­men­tary was al­so made at the time. Sev­er­al of Falke’s im­ages from this pe­ri­od are in the Tu­lane ex­hib­it.

Then her fo­cus shift­ed. As she told Made­line Mur­phy Turn­er: “Af­ter that, I want­ed to take the ex­pe­ri­ence of all I had learned in Trinidad far­ther—to ex­pand it and share it with oth­ers—and to build bridges of di­a­logue, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and ex­change in New York City, where I have my stu­dio.”

She then start­ed what has been a long term on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Brook­lyn Jumbies, a small troupe in New York, through the lead­ers Ali Sylvester from Trinidad and Na­j­ja Co­dring­ton from Bar­ba­dos. With them, she has been in­volved in the cre­ation of com­plex chore­o­graphed pre­sen­ta­tions not tied to Car­ni­val and of­ten on the streets of New York with chore­og­ra­phy. Most fa­mous is “Oc­cu­py Wall Street” where the im­ages of the Brook­lyn Jumbies ris­ing tall in busi­ness suits walked down Wall Street and went vi­ral.

“I look for ways that art can heal and im­prove how we live.”

Intervention: Red, 2021. Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with Chief Shaka Zulu, Naimah Zulu, Sarauniya Zuly and Kameron Bryant. At The Watermill Center for CROSSROADS by Carrie Mae Weems and Robert Wilson. Picture Michaela Lind

Co­dring­ton, in a round ta­ble dis­cus­sion for the Tu­lane ex­hib­it, talked of the im­pact they had in the var­i­ous in­ter­ven­tions they have par­tic­i­pat­ed with Bar­ba­ta, “I find that so­cial ac­tivism is best tak­en some­times through art.”

Their pro­ces­sion­al in­ter­ven­tions ini­tial­ly left peo­ple con­fused and ques­tion­ing but had an ef­fect to let them see things from above, gain per­spec­tive. She al­so works with a Mex­i­can folk­loric group Jarana Beat based in New York and Chris Walk­er, a dancer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and new head of the Di­vi­sion of the Arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin.

An­oth­er room of the ex­hib­it fea­tures the stun­ning suits Bar­ba­ta cre­at­ed for In­ter­ven­tion In­di­go that was first pre­sent­ed in Brook­lyn in 2015 with Brook­lyn Jumbies at a po­lice precinct as a call to ac­tion on po­lice vi­o­lence with Mex­i­can tra­di­tion­al dance rit­u­als and saw the pow­er of in­di­go, a “nat­ur­al dye used in rit­u­als of pro­tec­tion, pow­er, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.” It was al­so pre­sent­ed in Mex­i­co City in 2020. With the pan­dem­ic, she has made a se­ries of face masks in in­di­go. The short video is my favourite from the ex­hib­it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m0wLE7dS­bY

Start­ing in 2009, Bar­ba­ta has al­so been work­ing with a stilt-walk­ing group Zan­cu­d­os de Za­achi­la from Oax­a­ca and oth­er ar­ti­sans in Oax­a­ca. One room of the ex­hib­it at Tu­lane is de­vot­ed to her col­lab­o­ra­tions in Mex­i­co. It in­clud­ed elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed stilts, a se­ries of folk­loric wood­en pieces cre­at­ed with lo­cal Oax­a­can ar­ti­sans as well as the cos­tumes. Bar­ba­ta was al­so in­volved in a com­plex gift ex­change con­ven­ing with oth­er artists that stretched from Ja­maica to Papua New Guinea. A stun­ning book with the same ti­tle as the ex­hib­it, Transcom­mu­nal­i­ty came out in 2012 that sum­marised her work to that point.

The Tu­lane ex­hib­it has con­nect­ed Bar­ba­ta with mem­bers of the lo­cal Mar­di Gras In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty in a se­ries of work­shops and con­ver­sa­tions and hope­ful­ly will lead to fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions in New Or­leans. The black mask­ing In­di­ans have be­come icon­ic in the rich Mar­di Gras cul­ture in New Or­leans. There were a se­ries of record­ed ex­changes with Big Chief Sha­ka Zu­lu and a com­mis­sioned short video. He is the one Mar­di Gras In­di­an leader who does stilt danc­ing in New Or­leans as part of per­for­mances across the Unit­ed States. It is a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion passed down from his fa­ther. He has passed it on to his daugh­ter Niya. Sha­ka Zu­lu has had a long and com­plex artis­tic prac­tice him­self, lead­ing a drum­ming and dance troupe, tour­ing the coun­try with dif­fer­ent groups and teach­es both bead­ing and stilt danc­ing to young peo­ple in New Or­leans. Bar­ba­ta col­lab­o­rat­ed with him and his stilt dancers very re­cent­ly with In­ter­ven­tion Red at The Wa­ter­mill Cen­ter Sum­mer Fes­ti­val in New York.

The rich­ness of Lau­ra An­der­son Bar­ba­ta’s art can on­ly be ful­ly ex­pe­ri­enced by tak­ing time to view the vir­tu­al tour of the ex­hib­it, the videos of the street in­ter­ven­tions, her Tedtalk and more in the tri­umph of this mu­se­um ex­hib­it cu­rat­ed by Lau­ra Blereau.