Skip to main content
Article
Reprint: Andil Gosine's Cane Portraiture and the aesthetics of indenture
Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies (2023)
  • Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.
Abstract
Andil Gosine’s participant-driven performance Cane Portraiture aestheticizes the social history of indentured labourers in the Caribbean. The work expands the field of relations surrounding the discourse of ‘coolitude’ – the dissemination of Indian labour during the 19th century – by redressing the ‘coolie odyssey’. By doing so, Gosine suggests that the pathos of displacement produced by the 'coolie odyssey' moves through generations of the Caribbean diaspora. In an attempt to define and reconcile this tension, Cane Portraiture attempts to locate a renewed sense of place and of ‘home’. For Gosine, then, the conceptualization of 'home' is approached as an embodiment of a person or site that is shared with others.
Keywords
  • indenture,
  • indentured labour,
  • indenture and aesthetics,
  • coolie odyssey,
  • coolitude,
  • slavery,
  • Andil Gosine
Disciplines
Publication Date
July 4, 2023
Publisher Statement
This article was originally published in issue 36.3 (2019) of Blackflash Magazine.
Citation Information
Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.. "Reprint: Andil Gosine's Cane Portraiture and the aesthetics of indenture" Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies Vol. 3 Iss. 1 (2023)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/matthewryansmith/213/