Statement
The lore/lure of the Caribbean is a powerful one.
and
There’s a difference between being known and being known of.
For the marginalized, storytelling is our most powerful tool for self-liberation. As a Black Caribbean woman, my identity is situated at the intersections of categorical definition and defiance. This defiance is not marked by a negation, but a multiplicity. My identity isn’t concerned with refuting/correcting ignorance; My being simply exposes the limitations of understanding.
My practice is an ode to and-ing; it is an anthology of Caribbean folkloric practices, in service of auto-mythology and self-(re)creation. Through my texturally dense mixed-media collages I meld the visual and narrative intersections of mythology, horror, and humor, as I give space to lived experiences as they exist within, and often against, fabrications of paradise. In my practice collage is a philosophical and physical modality. Paint, paper, sand, fabric, color-manipulated photographs, bodily and tropical patterns are layered with disorienting vibrancy, to arrest and situate the viewer within chaotic, visceral yet idyllic landscapes, as they engage with figures and beings of equal aesthetic tension.
The core interests of my practice cohere with personal and collective quests for sovereignty. Using self-portraiture and Caribbean humanist theories as a foundation, I develop mythical beings that illustrate a fragmented, duplicated, flattened, transformed and transfigured selfhood. In this approach I highlight figuration as a form of abstraction and a container for narrative. In my work, the body is a dialogical space and the figure is an indeterminate form for a determinant being.
Biography
Cydne Jasmin Coleby (b.1993) is a visual storyteller from Nassau, Bahamas. Primarily working with mixed-media collage, Coleby explores what it means to be sovereign through the lens of Caribbean humanist theory. Employing Bahamian folkloric practices, her texturally dense works serve as tools for self (re)creation within, and against, colonial frameworks and notions of paradise.
Originally trained on home soil, Coleby studied at the University (then College) of the Bahamas before attaining her MFA in Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. Coleby has participated in numerous artist residencies including The Wassaic Project, Silver Art Projects, The Poinciana Paper Press Artist Residency, and the Radical Acts of Publishing Incubator. She has exhibited both locally and internationally in Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean, and her work is found in collections worldwide, including the United States, London, the Netherlands, Israel, France, and the Bahamas. Her work is part of the permanent collections of Syracuse University Art Museum, Syracuse, NY, and XiaoMuseum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China.