La Vaughn Belle's Material Reconfigurations of the Caribbean Pinteresco

Colonial visual logics attempt to define the Caribbean landscape in numerous ways. One way, according to St. Croix-based artist La Vaughn Belle, is through the Caribbean Pinturesco; forms of colonial visual language framing the Caribbean as an exotic picturesque commodity. This is similar to what Art Historian Krista Thompson calls processes of tropicalization, or “complex visual systems through which certain ideals and expectations of the Caribbean are imagined for tourist consumption."

This presentation focuses on the ways Belle utilizes strategies of reconfiguration to speak back to these colonial visual logics by centering Caribbean subjectivities in the United States Virgin Islands. More specifically, Belle's use of material within her work highlights historical narratives of rebellion and resistance, providing a methodology to re-read the colonial archives and disrupt narratives of the picturesque often preserved within them. The three works discussed within this presentation will include Belle's ongoing Cuts and Burns series, On the Service to the Kingdom (2017), and Becoming Wind and Current (2023). These three works provide unique insights into how materiality is inscribed within colonial visual logics and can also be a tool to disrupt and define them.