Paper short abstract:

I propose a paper and an example of a visual and sound installation on the realities of exotic and self-exoticizing representations, between the colonial past and the present of the tropical pictorialism of Trinidad and Tobago (WI).

Paper long abstract:

I propose an example of a visual and sound installation I created, that aims to demonstrate the construction of colonial pictorialism, by deconstructing the fictionalization of tropical representations of landscapes and of postcolonial identities on the territory of Trinidad and Tobago (WI), the location of my PhD fieldwork.

Colonial pictorialism represents the "new world" as a paradise created by European civilization that responds to its exotic imaginings.

The installation superposes paintings of colonial landscapes with personal contemporary digital photography. This visual corpus is accompanied by a sound installation in which the audience listens to self-exoticizing contemporary biographies while watching the new exoticized images.

The ultimate aim of my work is to see if it is possible to question the historical fictional construction of "the Tropics" by appropriating a new contemporary fictionality.

I propose to show one image and one oral story from the installation and to discuss in a paper format the decolonial and postcolonial theoretical frames that guide this art/anthropologic project. With this research, I wish to propose a different methodology that deals with colonial and postcolonial issues, specifically exotic and self-exoticizing representations. In the paper, I will explain the questions about decolonialization that took place during the fieldwork, and during the debates about the project in Trinidad, my own role as a foreign researcher in this process, and the attempts to make anthropological methodologies communicate with new artistic ways of researching. The paper describes the theoretical frames I used to create a decolonial method of investigation.