Interview with Marsha Pearce

 Marsha Pearce is a Cultural Studies PhD candidate at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago. She is also the 2006 recipient of the Rex Nettleford Cultural Studies Fellowship granted by the Rhodes Trust. Pearce’s paintings and writing have been published in a special issue of Callaloo (Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007), the premier journal of arts, letters, and cultures of the African Diaspora issued by Johns Hopkins University Press. Her artwork was also published as the cover image of Anthurium (Volume 6, Issue 2, Fall 2008), an online Caribbean Studies journal produced by the University of Miami.

In 2008 Pearce had a solo exhibition of mixed media paintings at the 7th International Association for Cultural Studies Crossroads Conference in Jamaica. In that same year, she also produced and directed a 91-minute documentary entitled “Wrestling with the Angels: An Exploration of Caribbeanness.” Through interviews with music video directors, producers and musicians/artistes from the English-speaking Caribbean, the documentary explores issues of representation and identity by looking at the complexities of portraying Caribbean people and life through the music video genre.

• What does the Caribbean mean to you?
  For me, the notion of “Caribbean” is inextricably linked with that of “invention.”
• What if anything is the significance of location – what role does location play in your understanding and experience of the Caribbean?
  Location is important. Gender is a locus. Race is a locus. Sexuality is a locus. Religion is a locus. Nationality is a locus. Class is a locus and so on. The inventive/imaginative articulations – to use the word “articulation” in the same way that Stuart Hall makes use of the word’s double meaning, that is, as both expression and connection – of these various loci play a role in a Caribbean experience.
• What does the Caribbean mean to you?
  For me, the notion of “Caribbean” is inextricably linked with that of “invention.”
• Can you relate a story from your past that seems to describe your experience of “Caribbeanness”?
  I remember doing a course on event management some years ago  – a course facilitated by both Caribbean and North American teachers. I remember the North American teachers commenting on the unique approach/vision of Caribbean event planners/designers. Those teachers were referring to our inventiveness.
• Can you share a piece of your work/project that speaks to the issues that we have discussed?
  I am in the process of creating a new body of work, inspired by the thinking of respected cultural figure Professor Rex Nettleford, Vice-Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies and founder of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company. I have found since his recent death in February 2010 that I am compelled to reread his works. I have become attracted to his notion of what he calls “the many-sided negro.” In his 1970 work entitled Mirror Mirror Nettleford observes that the term “negro” has lost its acceptance among New World blacks; that the term has been rejected by Rastafarians; that Black power advocates in Jamaica and the United States have all but expunged the term from the dictionary. Nettleford appropriates the term “negro.” He says of the negro: “he is black man, white man, brown man and all the ‘in-betweens’ rolled into one.” He says, “negro does not mean exclusively African and could never mean exclusively white – it is the other dimension…” It is via this “other dimension” that inventive, creative or experimental living in the New World is carried out.My new body of work in progress is entitled “The Many-sided Negro.” And, with this work I am experimenting with various media – mixing, combining hand work (acrylic, pastel, pencil) and computer work – such that the work itself becomes “a negro” or an “other dimension” that is, a number of things rolled into one. The work speaks to the issue of invention as well as “articulation” – the connection and expression of various elements.