The eighth session of the Dialogues Across the African World cycle will focus on some ways of performing the political in the carnival of Trinidad and Tobago (WI), and in its artistic practices.
In the first part, Maica Gugolati will discuss a statement made by carnival participants who perform the most contemporary form of the secular ritual, called Pretty Mas, which has become an aesthetic matrix for diasporic carnivals around the world and is attended primarily by women.
In the second part, she will share discussions that she has had with the artist Marlon Griffith (Trinidad-Japan) who uses the Mas (an aspect of the carnival) as a discourse and practice of contemporary art.
Through the vision of photographic material and videos of Maica Gugolati and the artist, this presentation will show the intersections and dissonances of the political performed during the Mas as a vernacular and artistic practice.
Maica Gugolati is a researcher in anthropology, affiliated with the Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAf) EHESS. She specializes in performance and visual anthropology. For her doctoral dissertation she studied the effects of visuality in the contemporary performance of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. Her research focuses on the Caribbean and its diasporas. With a grant from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), she is studying the digitalization of Notting Hill Carnival, London (2021).
She is co-editor and co-administrator of the research blog Decolonial Dialogues and co-editor of the academic journal International Carnival Studies.
Maica Gugolati is also a photographer and artist whose work has been exhibited in Brighton and Edinburgh, UK.
She works as an independent curator of contemporary art, her projects can be seen online at ArtCuratorGrid and AllegraLab Virtual Museum.
The Dialogues Across the African World cycle is presented by école des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Cité internationale des arts, and run by Dominique Malaquais (CR, CNRS-IMAF), Julie Peghini (MCF, Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis University-CEMTI), Christine Douxami (MCF HDR, Franche-Comté University-IMAF) and Sarah Fila-Bakabadio (MCF, CY Cergy Paris Université-AGORA).