Cydne Jasmin Coleby, BS

“There’s a difference between being known and being known of.”

“To be Caribbean is to be an amalgamation. My work speaks to the complexities of this layered aspect of my identity through collage, patterning, and the juxtaposition of aesthetics. My texturally dense mixed-media paintings complicate the widely understood vibrancy and paradisiacal motifs of the region, with colloquially resonant imagery, moments of the mundane, trauma-processing, and surrealism. This ultimately underscores that idyllic environments and identities hold a more visceral truth beyond the touristic gaze. Using personal and familial photographic archives and anecdotes as source material, I craft compositions that communicate how lived experiences operate within, and often against, manufactures of paradise.

“My practice reflects on the difficulty of distinguishing which experiences influence rather than define our sense of self. When it comes to establishing who we “are”, where do we enact our personal agencies to adlib, and when do we “follow the script” of who we should be? Pivoting from the micro to the macro, I operate within the realm of self-portraiture as a conduit to exploring how identity is shaped, reclaimed, expanded, and contracted in social contexts both within and beyond the tropics. In this modality, I aim to illuminate the dissociative qualities of “self”-examination and the indeterminacy of “self”, whilst also seeing this mode of figuration asan empathetic discourse with collective notions of identity.”