St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle has explored the Danish colonial history of the Virgin Islands through sculpture, photography, video, painting, collage, and site-specific works.  In today’s conversation with moderator Erica L. Johnson (Professor of English, Pace University), she explains the role of the body in her work, and how bodies bear memories that are often discarded by formal histories.

The event will take place in-person at Scandinavia House. Registration is required; please sign up at the link above.

About La Vaughn Belle

La Vaughn Belle is a multidisciplinary artist from the Virgin Islands. For years her work has responded to questions surrounding the coloniality of the Virgin Islands, both in its present relationship to the U.S. and its past one to Denmark. Her work borrows from elements of architecture, literature, history, archeology and social protest to create narratives that challenge the colonial process.  She is best known for her work reinterpreting the material artifacts of colonialism to create an alternative archive.

She has exhibited her work  in such institutions as the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, El Museo del Barrio, NY, Arts of the Americas Museum, Washington, DC., the Royal Library of Denmark and the Centro de Wilfredo Lam, Cuba.

About Erica Johnson

Erica L. Johnson is a Professor of English at Pace University.  Her scholarly fields include Caribbean literature and cultural memory studies, and she is the author of Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing, Caribbean Ghostwriting, and Home, Maison, Casa.

She has co-edited a number of volumes including Wide Sargasso Sea at 50 with Elaine Savory, Memory as Colonial Capital with Éloïse Brezault, and with Patricia Moran The Female Face of Shame and Jean Rhys: Twenty-First-Century Approaches.