Transitions Over Time
Hip Hop Kréyol In Ihe French West Indies: Redefining Creole Identity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Coraline Kandassamy
This paper considers the transformative role of Hip Hop Kréyol in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique), emphasizing its profound impact on diasporas and Black identity within the region with cultural, social and political domains. Hip Hop Kréyol transcends conventional categorizations, authentically embodying the evolving definition of Black heritage worldwide. At its core, this genre champions the Creole language, serving as a versatile tool for self-expression and empowerment in both Guadeloupe and Martinique. Creole, native to FWI, emerged during the colonial era as a means of communication among a diverse populace, including enslaved Africans, European colonizers, and indigenous inhabitants. In addition, Hip Hop Kréyol serves as a cultural preservation tool, which embraces and reinterprets traditional cultural elements within the context of modern music and urban life. Through music and lyrics, it carries forward the rich cultural heritage, history, and customs of the FWI, ensuring they remain relevant and accessible to younger generations. This preservation of cultural identity is crucial in a globalized world where indigenous cultures often face assimilation. Finally, Hip Hop Kréyol addresses issues of race, inequality, and social justice, challenging established power structures. By doing so, the music genre not only raises awareness but also encourages critical thinking about identity and the impact of colonial legacies on contemporary society. These factors enables Hip Hop Kréyol to actively shape and redefine what it means to be Creole in the 21st century.
Welcoming the New, Preserving the Old: Buddhist Art in a Soto Zen Temple in Hawai’i
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessica Falcone
This paper is a study of the sacred arts at the Daifukuji Soto Zen Buddhist temple in Hawai’i. As one might expect of a 100-year old temple that has historically served Japanese-Americans, the temple altars were primarily sanctified by sacred objects brought from Japan, especially statues. Each piece of statuary, whether hand-carved or metalwork, was imported from Japan, usually sponsored by a family or a group of families as an offering to the temple. As the demographics of the temple changed and more nonheritage converts joined, so too has the art world shifted. In the last few decades some local artists in Hawai’i have contributed to the traditional arts in interesting ways that further mark the temples as a syncretic, mixed heritage community: modern paintings of Kannon, contributed by a Japanese-born, now-local artist, Mayumi Oda, flank the statue altar; a woman from Oahu, a non-heritage devotee, painted a triptych in collaboration with the reverend of Buddhist images that emerged from a dream; and, a white artist who has collaborated with Asian religious teachers donated some Japanese-inspired woodblock prints. The mix of modern and traditional Buddhist arts both reflects the current temple culture and is an element that serves as an innovative means of creating it.
Visualising the Modern Chinese Woman: Art Deco Commercial Prints in Early Twentieth Century Hong Kong
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leung Kwok Prudence Lau
In the inter-war period, Hong Kong experienced a new wave of consumerism and nationalism, and many local products were marketed via print media, witnessing the rise of a new Chinese industry. Calendar posters (yuefenpai) became a mainstream commercial medium, disseminating modernity and ideologies of the Chinese woman in the early twentieth century. Several Chinese artists contributed in modern print media, including ‘King of calendar poster’ Hong Kong artist Kwan Wai-nung, creating numerous Art Deco advertisements and prints. However, research on these pioneers in modernising Chinese commercial art is scant. While studies reveal the myriad relations between women and consumer culture, positioning Art Deco as an intentional marketing strategy to ‘glamorise’ modern lifestyles (Todd 2004) as well as by being instruments of propaganda of modern living conditions, this field has yet to be explored for early modern Chinese art. This paper will utilise postcolonial theory as the basis for an analysis of early modern print media in Hong Kong and regional Chinese cities, arguing that there were ‘invisible’ forms of politics (as opposed to Bozdogan’s ‘visible politics’ of top-down programs in modernising non-Western countries) and that certain Chinese artists were problematising the artistic style while they contested colonial agenda in their commercial designs. This paper also argues that certain Chinese print media in the early twentieth century were not passive subjects unable to escape the pressure of British colonial ideology, but could instead ‘consume the dominant culture’ (Ashcroft 2001) via the Art Deco style in a strategy of self-fashioning and self-representation.
