Tout Moun Caribbean Journal of Cultural Studies
http://journals.sta.uwi.edu/toutmoun/index.asp © The University of the West Indies, Department of Liberal Arts
The Surgical Suture and the Embroidered Stitch – A Visual Project 1
Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
The Surgical Suture and the Embroidered Stitch – A Visual Project
KWYNN JOHNSON
These images come out of a larger body of work created in 2009 for a solo exhibition titled Red,
appropriated. The exhibition was made up of seven interconnected strands: 21 embroidered texts
on linen, 48 embroidered images on linen, 60 watercolours, 24 screen prints, 3 newspaper collages,
a short documentary on the Port-of-Spain General Hospital’s A&E room titled At a theatre near you,
and an installation of red roses. This thematically connected exhibition departed from our universal
association of red with blood, in order to visualise notions of violence/trauma and mixed-raced
identities in Trinidad. This visual project locates societal traumas and racial hegemonies as features
that not only have constructed the Caribbean in the world, but also continue to find a place in
Caribbean modernity (Figs. 1, 2 and 3).
Fig. 1: Screen Print
Fig. 2: Screen Print
Fig. 3: Screen Print
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
The colour red, the embroidered stitch, and suggestions of surgical sutures operate as both literal
and metaphorical strategies. These strategies visualised the political economy of “red” as a racialised
construct, alongside the imaging of societal trauma/violence, both of which continue to manifest
and be normalised in Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean (Figs. 4 and 5).
Fig. 5: Embroidery on Linen
Fig. 4: Embroidery on Linen
The mixed-raced category (African and European) which exists in the Caribbean and elsewhere,
has had numerous and definitive fictional evocations in West Indian literature. In locating this
racialised identity or category, the works of art sought to explore Paul Gilroy’s notions of the
“symbolic currency of race” (14) in the many race-colour hegemonies evokes in literature, which
rehearse the covert contestations and contradictions which play out in Caribbean societies. Kamala
Kempadoo’s feminist scholarship on the historicization of “the exotic and the erotic” mulatta, (35)
illuminates how the “red woman” identity has been constructed and is being replicated in the
contemporary scenario (Figs. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11).
Fig. 6; Embroidery on Linen
Fig. 7: Embroidery on Linen – The Mighty Cypher
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
Fig. 8: Shalini Puri
Fig. 9: Embroidery on Linen - Jestina’s Calypso (20). A line from the play by Earl Lovelace’s when his red-skinned Laura character is privileged over the dark-skinned Jestina.
Fig. 10: The Dragon Can’t Dance, Lovelace
Fig. 11: Lamming, 227
‘Red’ bodies are understood as exoticized and eroticized constructs, in the ‘hot’ Caribbean, or as
Mohammed postulates: “the desired” (22-48). These constructs are imaged to make a visual
comment on the commercialisation of such identities and their associations with the nationalism
project. Outdoor advertising banners which present taxonomies of red and redness, underscore
the currency of the ‘red’ man and the ‘red’ woman, and interpellate red embodiment in a sexed,
racialised and nationalistic discourse. The commoditization of ‘red’ bodies which continue to be
reproduced in contemporary Trinidad, have not displaced old categories, it has reproduced and
normalized them for a new social, cultural and political context (Figs 12, and 13 Photographs, Fig.
14).
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
Fig. 12: Destra
Fig. 13: Kes
Fig. 14
The red seal is used in the Red, appropriated exhibition to convey authority and authenticity. It
denotes the tenacity, fixity and rule of these racial labels and stereotypes which have been deeply
embossed into the fabric of Trinidadian and broader Caribbean identity. The photograph of an
embroidered seal was used to create a series of screen prints which incorporated other texts that
displayed ways in which red has been appropriated and ascribed meanings. This use of analogy is
explored in a large percentage of the overall exhibition.
“If yuh eh red yuh dead” was embroidered to represent not only a common saying in Trinidad, but
also how it can become a problematic motto in 21st century Trinidad. The act of stitching’ is a
metaphor for idealised hybridization as an all-encompassing social practice that does not always
hold. Similarly stitchery tied into Puri’s notions of discourses of hybridity: “Racial and nationalist
discourses in the Caribbean frequently offer contradictory instances of tearing apart and stitching
together “the people’, and discourses of hybridity offer a crucial means of managing those
contradictory tendencies” (Puri 48). While historically and politically Trinidadians have cited red as
the national colour and a ‘red flag’ as evoking a sense of national unity, this notion is subject to
contestation in the socio-political arena since red is the color of a single political party and is
projected as a reflection of its right of political ascendency. While, in another context, the use of a
red-beret by the then leader of Trinidad’s opposition party, drew on global associations to support
his awkward attempts at self construction as a revolutionary, anti-establishment, freedom fighter.
Both texts and images show with ‘redness’ in its diverse, clashing and evolving cultural
manifestations (Figs. 15, 16 and 17).
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
Fig. 15: Vote for Me
Fig. 16: Vote for me too
Fig. 17
Trinidad and the rest of the Caribbean have created mechanisms for addressing and forgetting the
memories of their history of trauma. We cope by sedating our deep-seated unrests, conflicts,
tensions and confusions. This metaphorical suture - a stitching together of wounds, is a mechanism
of masking trauma (Figs. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22). The evocation of the surgical suture, points to the skin
as a signifier which is marked with a multiplicity of meanings. Our skin is vulnerable; it is not
impenetrable or immune to damage, aging and commodification. We endure its battering,
bleeding and stitching-together: “The stitches close the wound or cut in the subject imperfectly,
leaving the scar as the trace of the bodily trauma” (Ahmed 47).
Fig. 18: Sea Lots
Fig. 19: West Indies Cricket
Fig. 20: Middle Passage
Fig. 21: Walcott’s Fragments
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Fig. 22: Free in Cuba
Fig. 23: The Shape of Rohlehr’s Hurt
These 60 watercolours looked at how contemporary Trinidad makes them invisible in all-inclusive
fetes, curfew-fetes, and in the ‘gifts’ sent from New York in a barrel to children (Figs. 23, 24, 25, 26,
27).
Fig. 24: Attach with full force
Fig. 25: Curfew Fetes
Fig. 26: Caroni 1975
Fig. 27: ‘Hart’ attacks
In investigating how violence infiltrates and intersects the social fabric, Gordon Rohlehr’s
instrumental essays, “The Shape of That Hurt” and “My Strangled City’ were instructive as they
addressed how we continue to manifest and normalize our hurts. The Jamaican themed
watercolours entitled ‘Ska/Scar’ and ‘The harder they come” as explored by Rohlehr, also brought
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
consideration of Jamaica’s woundedness and trauma into this discourse on violence. The collages
of press clippings which informed the research, also informed the 60 watercolour paintings’
imaging of how Trinidadians inflict as well as survive trauma, and seek to close these wounds as
seamlessly as possible, or find mechanisms to hide their scars (Figs. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32).
Fig. 28: Chop
Fig. 29: By-pass
Fig. 30: VIP Treatment
Fig. 31: Fete Remedy
Fig. 32: Carnival Remedy
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Tout Moun ▪ Vol. 2 No. 1 ▪ October 2013
This work is a visual questioning of the constructs, contestations, traumas and wounding which
occur within the social relations in Trinidad. It elicits the question: what happens when those
superficial ‘sutures’ do not hold? This visual project sought to demonstrate the possibilities for an
interdisciplinary practice of art skills including domestic crafts, videography and installations to
create representations of the complex subject matter of race and violence. The range of techniques
demonstrated several ways of seeing the colour red as colour, as cultural construction, as national
energy, passion and woundedness, as vital life blood and as gore, red as pain and red as pleasure.
LIST OF IMAGES
3 Screen prints
9 9 Embroidered texts on linen
2 2 Digicel Banners
3 3 Embroidered images on linen
6 6 Newspaper headlines
16 Watercolour paintings with nylon-coated fishing wire
REFERENCES
Ahmed, Sarah. "Animated Borders" Skin, Colour and Tanning." Vital Signs. Feminist
Reconfigurations of the Bio/logical Body. Ed. Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998.
Gilroy, Paul. "The Crisis of "Race" and Raciology." Culture beyond the Colour Line. Mass:
Harvard UP, 2000.
Johnson, Kwynn. Red, Appropriated. Cultural Studies Exhibition. Trinidad: Soft Box Studio
Gallery, 2009.
Kempadoo, Kamala. Resistance, Rebellion, and Futures. Sexing the Caribbean. London and
New York: Routledge, 2004.
Lamming, George. In The Castle of My Skin. The University of Michigan P, 2005.
Lovelace, Earl. Jestina's Calypso and other plays. London: Heinemann, 1984.
Mohammed, Patricia. “But Most of All Mi Love Mi Browning: The emergence in Eighteenth
and Nineteenth century Jamaica of the Mulatto Woman as the Desired. Feminist
Review. No. 65: 2000.
Puri, Shalini. The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism and Cultural
Hybridity. New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2004.
Rohlehr, Gordon. The Shape of That Hurt. Port of Spain: Longman Trinidad Ltd, 1992.
Rohlehr, Gordon. My Strangled City and other essays. Port of Spain: Longman Trinidad Ltd, 1992.