Jack Shainman Gallery

February 10, 2014, 9:22am

Radcliffe Bailey’s Maroons

In Radcliffe Bailey’s (NAP #28) new exhibition, Maroons, on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, the Atlanta-based artist challenges the dominant history of slavery, and probes the unexpected cultural interactions that it inadvertently promoted. The show’s title references the “maroon” communities of escaped African slaves that formed illicit settlements throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. The English name for these “maroons” comes from the Taíno word símaran, a word describing the flight of an arrow. Taíno is the indigenous culture and language of Caribbean islands like Hispaniola that the colonists first made landfall on, making it an appropriate root for the term. The title also primes viewers for the issues of displacement, diaspora, and migration that the works in this show primarily engage. – Nadiah Fellah, NYC Contributor

Installation view showing Vessel, 2012 (left), tarp, iron, vintage model ship, wicker basket and glass, 120 x 188 x 89 inches; and Pensive, 2013 (right), bronze and rough-sawn fir logs, 58 x 39 ¼ x 45 ¼ inches. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery.